Author: zoglinreviews

I have not read Sue Monk Kidd’s bestselling novel The Secret Life of Bees, nor seen the (less successful) 2008 movie, so I came to the new off-Broadway musical based on her story without any preconceptions. I also came fresh from seeing Fairview, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s much acclaimed, stylistically adventurous, aggressively woke exploration of racial … Continue reading ‘The Secret Life of Bees’: Sweet Redemption →

While slogging through a slow period for theater, I thought I'd revisit a topic I've been following closely ever since my 2016 TIME cover story, "The New Politics of Late Night":  The doctored video of Nancy Pelosi that went viral recently — her remarks slowed down just a hair to exaggerate her slurring speech patterns — … Continue reading Can Seth Meyers Run for President? →

I try not to get too excited or outraged over the Tony Awards. But a few thoughts on the nominations announced earlier this week: First, they’re a sign that Broadway is thriving. I remember lean years when there were barely enough shows to fill up the four nomination slots for Best Musical. (In 1995 the … Continue reading A Good Year for the Tonys, Unless You’re Glenda Jackson →

I guess I can say (though I wouldn’t press the point) that I knew Rupert Murdoch back when. In the mid-1970s, very early in my journalism career, I was working for a small company that published four monthly magazines for young professionals — doctors, lawyers, engineers and MBAs. Midway through my time there, the company … Continue reading ‘Ink’: Redeeming Rupert Murdoch →

As the Tony deadline nears, the Broadway openings are coming fast and furious. Here’s my fast take on three of them: Burn This. The new revival of Lanford Wilson’s 1986 play (my first encounter with the play) is a disappointment. The slight plot revolves around the death of a gay dancer, who has left behind … Continue reading Broadway’s Spring Rush: Hillary, Hades and Histrionics →

An occasional blog about theater, movies, the media, and other matters

Oklahama — oh my.  You’ve heard, probably, about the drastically revisionist new production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s classic musical, which played to rave reviews in Brooklyn last year and has now landed on Broadway, where I saw it for the first time. It is certainly a striking production, eccentric to the max, one of the … Continue reading Oh, What a Beautiful Mourning: The New ‘Oklahoma!’ →

Suzan-Lori Parks has written a series of provocative plays, most of them revolving around issues of race and usually in non-realistic styles, ranging from Brechtian fable (Fucking A), to historical allegory (Venus; Father Comes Home from the Wars) to baffling surrealism (The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World), In her latest work, … Continue reading Slave Mentality: The Wrong Notes in ‘White Noise’ →

It's very now. Be More Chill, Broadway's new teen-angst musical about a high-school misfit who takes a pill laced with a computer chip that turns him into Mr. Cool, pretty much fizzled when it premiered at a small theater in New Jersey four years ago. But it became a viral hit on the Web — with a … Continue reading Five Things to Know About ‘Be More Chill’ →

It was only coincidental that I went to see a program of five Oscar-nominated short films last weekend, just after the Motion Picture Academy backtracked on its plan to relegate that and three other awards to a commercial break on Sunday’s Oscar telecast.  Now I see what a travesty it would have been. Collectively, the … Continue reading Short but Not Sweet: An Oscar Interlude →