Zoglin’s View

A blog about theater

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 →

Is anyone else getting a little tired of Trump jokes? I was one of the first — in a 2016 cover story for Time — to celebrate the new political humor on late-night TV.  I still look forward to Seth Meyers’ pointed “A Closer Look” segments, and Bill Maher, after a couple of months’ absence, is back … Continue reading Colin Quinn: Political Satire Minus Trump →

I hate to dwell too long on To Kill a Mockingbird, Aaron Sorkin’s new Broadway adaptation of the Harper Lee novel, because it inevitably means making comparisons with the classic 1962 movie version, starring Gregory Peck — and I just finished doing the same thing with Broadway’s Network. Yes, a theatrical work should be judged … Continue reading Atticus Finch Gets the Sorkin Treatment →