My friend Martin Charnin, the versatile, venerable showman, most famously as the lyricist and director of the Broadway show Annie, died last week. I met him circa 1991. One day out of the blue a man called me. He had read an article I had written for Spy called “When Disney Ruled America,” a speculative …
Here’s Ginny, showing that she ain’t too proud to see a Broadway show featuring all the hits of the fabulous Temptations, even if it means standing in the heat amidst a milling crowd posing for her annoying husband.
Neither Ginny nor I are prone to tout our own abilities, but there are some things we can do, and that’s all there is to it. As it happens, one of them is sitting. Like Will Sonnet, the old TV character played by Walter Brennan put it. “No brag, just fact.” Not that we won’t pee …
I haven’t been to the theater in a long time, but thanks to a secret benefactor, I was able to see two shows this week, both star vehicles. The first, I’ll Eat You Last, was an amusing trifle starring Bette Midler as the once legendary Hollywood agent Sue Mengers. As a decades-long fan of Midler …
Usually when I see a play and think that the acting is a little hammy and the script a bit sappy, I have not had a good time. In the case of War Horse, however, which Ginny and Molly and Cara and I saw last Sunday, those objections were overshadowed by the sheer awesome, brilliant …
Cleaning the attic this week, I came upon this trove of photographs of the original cast of Loose Lips, taken during rehearsal, probably in June or July of 1994. The pictures were almost certainly taken by my co-writer Lisa Birnbach. Above, Jimmy Biberi, Sarah Pratter, Ingrid Rockefeller, Keith Primi, Luke Toma and Scott Bryant. Below, …
Ladies and gentlemen, your brand new traffic-less Times Square. Much less life-threatening now. One of very favorite sites from an ever-rapidly disappearing Times Square: The old I. Miller Shoe Company on the northeast corner of West 46th Street and Times Square, a great shoe-supplier to the stage during the theatrical heyday of the 1920s, when …
A stranger comes up to you at a bar or in a train station and starts to tell you a story. How long do you last? Five minutes? Could you tolerate him for ten minutes without looking at your watch? How about ninety? Impossible. And yet seven times a week at Greenwich Village’s Barrow Street …
Congratulations to Cara and her friends in the Summercliff Players on their excellent performance of Les Miserables. It’s amazing that they were able to pull together this complicated show in just five weeks. It was very, very enjoyable, and I was happy to see that Cara seemed to enjoy the experience so much.
One of the best highlights of summer these last few years has been seeing Shakespeare in Central Park with my daughter Molly. We’ve seen Twelfth Night, Two Gentlemen of Verona: The Musical, Mother Courage, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hair, and, last week, Hamlet. The productions aren’t always great, but it’s always fun …