The Determined Dilettante

I learned so much! My favorite kind of story is the kind where I explore something new to me. Click here for the latest culture diary (and ...

Ugh, that show did not go over as well as I wanted it to. My thoughts on this new production at New York Theater Workshop are here .

 I love William Inge and am happy every time one of his plays gets produced in New York. I do wish this Bus Stop had been a little better…

Bye Bye Birdie, Annie, Applause : Charles Strouse had a way with earworms — maybe that's happens when a conservatory-trained composer st...

Once again I was on deck as part of the New York Times team covering the Eurovision Song Contest. I wrote about how to watch , Celine Dion...

There is still theater to stream out there, and some made it to this new column (I write it every other month). It's also really fun for...

What a Broadway debut! Jasmine Amy Rogers kills it in Boop! The Musical and I for one love it that she's getting acknowledged as someon...

You want science fiction! I've got science fiction! The latest edition of my monthly column has more goodies to stream at home.

There is still time to catch several of the shows I included in my roundup of Off and Off Off Broadway productions for May! (I know, I know ...

Catching up with my backlog of articles!  I'd see Elizabeth Marvel in pretty much anything — and over the years, I feel like I've se...

I'd been trying to interview Keeley Hawes for something like seven years and finally, the stars aligned! My feature is up at the NY Time...

I think the Atlantic would have done this play a favor by putting it on its smaller stage. My review of Grief Camp is up at the NY Times.

Does the Stranger Things -verse translate to Broadway? My review of The First Shadow is up at the NY Times.

I've long been a fan of Jeremy Jordan and finally got to talk to him — about Floyd Collins and other things. My feature for the NY Time...

It's hard to think of a more engaging interviewee than Jinkx Monsoon. I hope I did her justice in this interview.

The first David Cronenberg movie I ever saw was Videodrome,  right when it came out. I didn't know what hit me! Here we are, decades lat...

Natalie Dessay and her daughter, Neïma Naouri, just sang Rose and Louise in Paris! I wish I'd been there. Second best was talking to the...

Last year I joined the first three days of the Delaware River Sojourn: about 9-12 miles of kayaking daily and camping at night. That last pa...

I've started mulling over the May column and so I probably link to the current one — I'm so behind in those posts, which are pretty ...

Natalie Margolin has a real playwright's voice and I'm there for it. I talked to the cast members of her new comedy, All Nighter, a...

Only one week left to see the Benedict Andrews production of The Cherry Orchard at St. Ann's Warehouse: go, go, go! Here's my enthus...

The Encores! series revived Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner's obscure musical Love Life, and I had mixed feelings about it: appealingly ...

There is a bit of a Maria Schneider moment going on, and the new movie Being Maria, which I just wrote about, is part of it. I also highly r...

I know that this post's subject line will draw some Gaga fans but it's the Norwegian band I'm talking about. Bucket-list intervi...

Kooky outfits, wacky races, cold drinks on warm decks: I wrote about the rites of spring skiing for the Washington Post. Click here for a g...

I wrote two theater roundups for the NY Times this month. The first one covers new shows that are playing Off and Off Off Broadway . The sec...

Here's my latest batch of streaming sci-fi movies you may have missed. Oh, let's face it: You're extremely likely to have misse...

I didn't actually use that term in my review, but Buena Vista Social Club is a jukebox musical, and a good one. My write-up for the NY ...