In the Wings

They chat breezily about this and that before getting down to business, but these three actresses — Donna Bellone, Elise Godfrey and Marian McCabe — are standing at base camp, about to scale the Everest of theatrical roles. The next three weekends, each will open separate runs as Mama Rose,... Read More →

There aren’t likely many people who find their life’s calling in the fifth grade. David Watson did. Back in the late 1950s, Watson’s fifth-grade teacher at Rye’s Midland School was the legendary Albert Cullum, a maverick who championed teaching Shakespeare in elementary schools. In 1964, Cullum dreamed up a year-long… Read More →

One of the most stirring moments in “Wallenberg” — the epic musical now in its world premiere at the White Plains Performing Arts Center — comes at the top of Act 2, when Budapest’s Jews are huddled on a railcar in late 1944, bound for certain death in a Nazi… Read More →

Last fall at Hudson Stage, “Rabbit Hole” starred the son of New Rochelle actress Frances Sternhagen of “Sex and the City” fame. This fall, “Salvation” at the Briarcliff theater also stars a Sternhagen son. Last year, it was Tony Carlin. This year, it’s his brother, Paul, who still calls New… Read More →

Before he got the call to play him, Scott Mikita knew little about Raoul Wallenberg. “I knew he had done something to save the Jewish population somewhere,” Mikita says. Starting Thursday, audiences will get to know the World War II hero through Mikita’s performance in “Wallenberg,” a new musical drama… Read More →

This is an updated version of a story I wrote last year about the musical “Wallenberg.” That show will get its world premiere at the White Plains Performing Arts Center starting Thursday. Read my interview with star Scott Mikita here. The first time he heard about Raoul Wallenberg, Laurence Holzman… Read More →

Pity the poor Prozorov girls, those long-suffering siblings at the center of Anton Chekhov’s classic drama, “Three Sisters.” Time and circumstance are not kind to them. Chekhov’s masterpiece gets a faithful, if at times academic, production from Purchase Repertory Theater at the PepsiCo Theater through Oct. 23. In an age… Read More →

In the midst of a discussion about the treatment of gays in America, two Lower Hudson Valley high schools will stage “The Laramie Project,” a play about the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. Rye High School presents the drama this weekend, with a cast of 47 that includes students, 16… Read More →

Like St. Matthew’s gospel upon which it is based, Stephen Schwartz’s musical “Godspell” is subject to interpretation. There are parables to tell and songs to sing, yes, but the actors, directors and creative team are encouraged to put their own spin on the show. It’s a musical of its moment…. Read More →

In the middle of an award-winning choreography career, Peter Pucci joined the circus. For the past 18 months — when he hasn’t been teaching Juilliard first-years how to approach a script or choreographing and teaching at Manhattanville College or helping to stage musicals — Pucci has been thinking about jugglers… Read More →

There is good, evil and a little bad in “Jekyll & Hyde” at Westchester Broadway Theatre. Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 story has inspired countless adaptations on stage and film. The earnest Dr. Jekyll labors to find a cure for mental illness, to drive away the demons that have stricken his… Read More →

John Lithgow knows what it’s like to have people interpret his words. The Emmy and Tony award-winning actor, perhaps best known as the lovable alien Dick Solomon on TV’s “Third Rock from the Sun,” is also a writer of children’s books (six and counting). He supplies the words and the… Read More →

When Noreen Kelly-Perkes — a longtime member of the Chappaqua Drama Group who was famous for creating costumes from nothing and doing all sorts of theatrical sleight-of-hand — accepted her Cab Calloway Lifetime Achievement Award on Tuesday night, she rattled off a fantastically funny list of helpful hints. Here it… Read More →

OK, so maybe there’s no invite to the Oscars or even the Tonys, but last night’s Cab Calloway Lifetime Achievement Awards at Westchester Broadway Theatre was something special. I followed the event live on twitter. (Read the Twitter feed here.) Among the highlights for me: Quentin Beaver (inset, accepting his… Read More →

Jeffrey Hatcher’s “Mrs. Mannerly,” now in its New York premiere at Penguin Rep in Stony Point, is a slight, sweet, one-act comedy. The two-person play, which runs about 80 minutes, stars Diane Ciesla as the strait-laced, etiquette-teaching title character and Mark Shanahan as everyone else, including the narrator, a character… Read More →

Put enough pressure on a piece of coal and you’ll have a diamond. If the conditions aren’t right, you’ll still have coal. While few would call the circumstances of Elaine Del Valle’s childhood “right,” watching her autobiographical one-woman show, “Brownsville Bred” — on stage at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton… Read More →

Through the years, Dr. Laurence Baker has received his share of awards. “Recently, I was honored by the Psychological Association,” he says, “but I told my wife, Joy: ‘This one makes me happier.’” “This one” is the 2010 Cab Calloway Lifetime Achievement Award honoring work in the performing arts in… Read More →

Xander Chauncey says that, try as we might, it’s hard to hide our Hydes. Chauncey — whose first name is pronounced “ZAN-der” and is short for Alexander — plays the title characters in “Jekyll and Hyde” at Elmsford’s Westchester Broadway Theatre, in a run that opens officially on Oct. 7… Read More →