About the writer: This a guest post written by writer Lisa Gerstel, a diverse and seasoned executive who has spent her career in children’s and family entertainment via Publishing, Live Events and Broadcast before stepping back to take a much earned reprieve from the corporate world in order to reinvent herself and remember why she moved to NYC. She lives in the latest hip neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn with her daughter.

One extremely chilly November weekend, I ventured all the way from Brooklyn to Manhattan with my 7-year-old daughter and her grandparents to continue her introduction to the glitz and glamour of Broadway, beyond the bigger than life characters in Times Square! Our destination: “Mummenschanz In Re:Play” at the New Victory Theater on 42^nd Street.

If you are looking for a unique theatrical experience, this is for you AND your kids.  It’s a 60-minute immersion into a world that is not quite puppetry, not quite straight visual theater or Pantomime but 100% imagination. 

Mummenschanz, the Swiss troupe, is performing at the New Vic until December 1st, is presenting a series of two dozen standalone routines, featuring the performers’ favorite sketches pulled from a 47-year history, tweaking them specifically for families. The unique use of shape-shifting costuming that the players turn into various forms – mouths, snakes, frogs – in complete darkness, allowed the black-clad artists to move around the stage unseen as they manipulated sticks, boxes, and poofs. Forms appeared to float, swirl, and dip and dive around the stage, creating an amazing, playful, non-verbal language appealing to all. The audience of mostly children, ages 4-12, and enamored adults, “oohed” and “ahhed” and loved participating in tossing a huge red ball around the theater.

Routines using musical instruments in very unusual ways created even more whimsy.  My daughter, Almah, said, she loved the sticks that started out like snakes and morphed into people walking, running and sitting. Grandpa loved the simplicity of the purely visual staging which made everyone use their imaginations to interpret what they were experiencing.

The New Vic Theater is a fabulous venue for families introducing their young ones to the Broadway scene. With an imaginative downstairs play area for pre-theater hanging out and a Healthy Snack bar, you can even stow your gear in kid-friendly lockers.

“Mummenschanz in RE:PLAY” is playing through December 1st. Full price tickets are available online and by phone 646.223.3010. You can also purchase tickets at the box office.

Disclosure: Lisa was provided with complimentary tickets to facilitate this review, but all opinions are her own.

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This year the press room at the 73rd Annual Tony Awards was buzzing with excitement as news of the winning recipients flooded in throughout the evening. The room was full of reporters from around the world, writing for all kinds of publications from print to broadcast. It was an honor to be inside, and I relished my contact with the journalists and performers who came through to speak to us. These are people who love theater as much as I do, if not more.

There weren’t too many surprises as far as awards, for me, anyway, as someone who has seen most of the nominees. Hadestown garnered eight awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score, earned a spot as the only musical ever to be both directed and scored by women. Oklahoma!, which won for Best Revival of a Musical, also won the Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical for Ali Stroker, who became the first wheelchair-using actor to ever win a Tony Award.  André  Shields won for Hadestown, his first win after a career on stage spanning over 50 years, for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. The Ferryman picked up four awards, knocking expected winner What the Constitution Means to Me out of the competition. The Boys in the Band won for Best Revival of a Play” which was expected to go to The Waverly Gallery. However, Elaine May won for Best Actress for that show, her first ever Tony Award. Tootsie won a few awards, including one for its lead Santino Fontana. Other losers included Beetlejuice, Ain’t Too Proud (which won one award), and The Prom.

There’s nothing quite like seeing someone after receiving the biggest award of their career, and the stroll  into the media room is a special one. Here are some of our favorite quotes from the evening:

Eva Price, Best Revival of a Musical, Oklahoma!, on teaming up with anti-gun organizations:

“It was important to us to keep bringing our advocacy and the impact program that’s within our show as relates to gun neutral into our performance tonight. We had kids from Parkland, March for Our Lives, Everytown, mom groups against violence, actual victims, really inspiring people.”

Andre De Shields, Best Featured Actor in a Musical, Hadestown, on what the award means:

“Part of what I said this evening is what I my promise to colleagues in Baltimore, particularly to my mother and father, who had dreams of being a performer.  Now I can go about my next 73 years doing what satisfies me. There are so many other adventures that I want to have.”

Celia Keenan-Bolger, Featured Actress in a Play, To Kill a Mockingbird, on the importance of this play:

“Right now it’s important because of Aaron {Sorkin}’s script which is asking big questions about our country’s relation to race and morality. I also have a 4 year old child. It’s about the character certainly. It’s also about this play in this culturemal moment we are living in right now. The award is meaningful because this role is very much tied to who I am and how I was raised. It’s also an award for my parents and grandparents who are such advocates for social justice.”

Bertie Cavill, Best Featured Actor in a Play, Ink, on how he feels about his Tony Award:

“It’s a great relief to have it out of the way. It’s not like back  home where everyone is demure. My adrenaline ended about 20 minutes ago.”

Fitz Patton, Best Sound Design in a Play, Choir Boy, on what makes his work unique:

“It’s about did the sound make you forget where you were?”  

Rachel Chavkin, Best Direction of a Musical, Hadestown,on being the only female director directing a musical this season:

“I wish I wasn’t the only woman directing a musical on Broadway  this season. There are so many women and artists of color ready to go. It’s a failure of imagination by a field whose job it is to imagine how the world could be.”

Bryan Cranston, Best Leading Actor in a Play, Network, on his mention of politics in his acceptance speech:

“It’s absurd to think that the media is the enemy of the people,” Cranston said. “If that message keeps getting propagated over and over and over again, sometimes it starts to seep in. And the perception of the truth is often more important than the truth, because if people believe it, it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. “So the opposite message has to continue to be put out there, whether it’s diversity or the fight against the media or women’s reproductive rights or voting rights,” Cranston continued. “It’s important to keep sounding the alarm.”

Ali Stroker, Best Featured Actress in a Musical, Oklahoma!, On what needs to change on Broadway for people with disabilities:

“I would ask theater owners and producers to look into how they can make backstage accessible so performers can get around.”

Rachel Hauck, Best Scenic Design of a Play, Hadestown, on receiving recognition:

“To receive this recognition as a team is extraordinary.”

Jessica Paz, Best Sound Design of a Musical, Hadestown, on the importance of her Tony Award:

“I hope it inspires any young woman to pursue this field.”

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Beautiful and Elegant puppetry!

My girls were mesmerized by “Ajijaak on Turtle Island,” now playing at the New Victory Theater. If only I had been able to capture the amazement in their eyes and could show you their jaws dropped to the floor in wonder. They loved the puppets: the Turtle, the Whooping Cranes, the Buffalo, and the music! As a bonus, there was a song they taught us, a sure fire way into my kiddos hearts.

We are just beginning our theater indoctrination and what a great way to start. 

The story looks to explain the Chaos created by Man’s mistreatment of earth – a theme certain to resonate across all generations.

Told against the backdrop of an Indigenous/First Nations people, pulling from symbolism of deer, coyotes, buffalo  – “the two-legged, four-legged, winged rooted and finned”  We follow a young Whooping Crane, Ajijaak , as she searches along the migration path to reunited with her parents after a fire and other environmental catastrophes separate them.  As Ajijaak migrates south along Turtle Island (North America) she learns about the past and seeks a better future. 

Perhaps my young theatergoers – Aviv and Almah (aged 6 ½) described it best:

“I like the song that they taught us and the music”…  “even when they play the drums when like a scary part happened”

“It’s a story about a bird who loses her parents and has scary things happen. But she meets good friends and they help her and in the end she find her parents.”

“I give it a rating between one and 10. I think it is 10.”

“I liked the music and the dancing and that some of the dancers came from the audience and not from the stage.”

Disclosure: Lisa Gerstel was provided with complimentary tickets to facilitate this review. All opinions are her own.

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Let me preface this blog post by saying that I grew up with the Go-Go’s. They were one of my first concerts and I truly love their music. From “Vacation” to “We Got the Beat” to “Our Lips Are Sealed” to “Head Over Heels,” their music makes me generally happy, and very nostalgic.

So, when I heard about the new show “Head Over Heels” which just opened on Broadway, I was ecstatic. Yet dubious. I knew it was the Go-Go’s music set to an Elizabethan fairytale and the most LGBTQ show ever made, according to my Broadway friends on Twitter, so I had to see it.

The show is a fairytale about the people living in the kingdom of Arcadia and an oracle’s prophecy of doom that takes the king and his royal family through a journey of mistaken identity, jealous lovers and sexual awakening. Women fall in love with women, men with women, women with men who are dressed up like me, and so forth.

And the show is ground-breaking. It’s about sexual identity and the struggles that come along with it. It’s also the first play on Broadway to ever include a trans woman in a lead role. It’s about gender bending and inclusion.The bottom line: Love is love is love is love. A message we all like to hear again and again in 2018 in the age of Trump.

It’s about freedom. Liberation. Acceptance. And the theme weaves in and out of the story effortlessly, all the way to the dancers and choreography. In the photo below, the magnetic backup dancers are set free, vogueing and striking wonderful poses with a clear sense of freedom. One that I wish I could say we had in reality these days.

“Head Over Heels” features 17 of The Go-Go’s iconic hit songs. The songs are wonderful, as you’d expect them to be, and they are well sung by a skilled cast. The show is a bit campy, but there is nothing wrong with that, particularly at a time when we all need a dose of positivity and inclusion.

“Head Over Heels” is playing Broadway at Hudson Theatre (141 West 44^th Street) on Thursday, July 26, 2018 (previews begin Saturday, June 23).

Disclosure: I was provided with complimentary tickets to facilitate this review but all opinions are my own.

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The cast of Hamilton. Photo credit: Walter McBride

I recently had the amazing experience of joining 1,300 NYC Public School students and teachers at a performance of HAMILTON on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. I hadn’t seen the show on Broadway; I had only seen it off-Broadway in its infancy days at the Public Theater so I was very much looking forward to see how it had morphed over the years (and then some, right?).

After having spent several weeks in their classrooms studying American history through a special integrated curriculum about Alexander Hamilton and the nation’s Founding Fathers, the students were chaperoned to the theater for a very special afternoon that included a Q&A with the cast. If that wasn’t special enough, a group of students in attendance performed an original work they created based on their classroom studies – songs, rap, poetry, scenes, and monologues in front of their peers.  The pieces were profound – very much focused on diversity, equality/inequality, slavery, women’s rights. Each resonated as a sounding board very much honoring where we are today in our own history. It was reassuring to see that so many young people are rising up and using their platforms to sound off on how they feel about where we are, and where we are going.

As soon as I took my seat for the performance, I knew I was a part of something very special. I spoke to a young man named Moses from John E. Dwyer Technology Academy on how he felt about coming to the show and he said his aim was “o understand stories that weren’t told in our history books, the stories of people who aren’t represented and weren’t heard.” There were kids from ten schools from around NYC: from the Bronx Lab School to Democracy Prep Harlem High School to Lyons Community School to Pathways to Graduation. Many of the kids had never seen the show or been to a Broadway show, and it was their first time to ever be in a theater so there was an amazing vibe.

Photo credit: Walter McBride

I had long heard about this educational experience for teens. HAMILTON producer Jeffrey Seller and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, The Rockefeller Foundation, the NYC Department of Education and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History  came up with the concept and I have been waiting for other shows to take part. Apparently, MEAN GIRLS is embarking on a similar initiative. The Rockefeller Foundation provided an initial grant of $1.46 million that funded the educational partnership in New York City.  After the resounding success of the partnership in New York, The Rockefeller Foundation committed an additional $6 million to the effort to support the national expansion of the program.  The Rockefeller Foundation has a long history of supporting the arts and humanities, fueled by a belief that the cultivation of aesthetic sensibilities through literature, music and other fine arts is essential to the well-being of humanity.  The HAMILTON Education Program underscores the Foundation’s commitment to nurturing the vitality of American cultural institutions and the role of the arts as a catalyst for social change.

Tickets for this educational partnership are available at $10 to students and teachers. What a special experience for them.

Disclosure: I was granted access to this event as a journalist and was covering this for another publication.

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Last night this musical theater lover was jumping in her seat.

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Source: NYT.

Beau Willimon wrote “The Parisian Woman, now playing on Broadway in NYC. He is also the creator of Netflix’s “House of Cards” and the upcoming series “The First” on Hulu. From what I understand, he is constantly making changes to his new play, which takes place in contemporary Washington, D.C. and revolves around an uncannily familiar President who we don’t learn is called Trump near the end of the play. But believe me, it is completely obvious that this play was written to reflect the tumultuous, turbulent, twisted times we are living in.

I actually knew very little about The Parisian Woman beforehand, and I wondered about its name for a the first half of the play until the lead character, Chloe, played by Uma Thurman, explained its origins. The play borrows its title and plot from La Parisienne, an 1885 French play by Henry Becque about a married woman and her two lovers. In that case, they scandalized Paris; in this case, her affairs are scandalizing DC. The main characters are not completely innocent, as much as we would like to believe they are. They are actually complicit in securing a judicial nomination in the Trump administration through unnatural and unethical means (sound familiar yet?). We watch as a bit of bribery takes place to secure that seat and the way it happens is beyond your wildest imagination. It’s very clever, and fortunately it involves all the main female character.

Thurman makes her Broadway debut in “The Parisian Woman”. Her character is beautiful, bored, conniving, and rather scrupulous, and I think that Thurman plays her skillfully. It’s not an easy character, to be sure.

The show is directed by Pam MacKinnon of “Clybourne Park” fame and also stars Josh Lucas (“Sweet Home Alabama,” “American Psycho,” “The Mysteries of Laura”), Tony Award winner Blair Brown (“Orange Is The New Black,” “Fringe,” “Copenhagen,” “Nikolai” and “The Others”), Marton Csokas (“Loving,” “The Lord of the Rings”) and Tony Award nominee Phillipa Soo (“Hamilton,” “Amélie”). The cast has an electric chemistry that helps bring a tale that hits far too close to home in 2017 to life.

I will admit that the play picks up half way through but once it does, you’ll be at the edge of your seat. I’m not sure if that’s because the actors find their stride at a certain point, but when it turned, the play brought my frustration about the times we are living in to life.

Tickets are now available through www.thehudsonbroadway.com or (855) 801-5876. This is a spectacular theater that re-opened only very recently.

Disclosure: I was provided with complimentary tickets to facilitate this review and other pieces on the play. Stay tuned for interviews with the director and several cast members over on Women & Hollywood.

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Guest writer Liat Ginsberg is a mother and former journalist for the Israeli newspaper, Maariv. She has taught at the Film and Media Department at Hunter College.

If you or you kids are fans of  the Harry Potter series, the play Puffs is for you. In addition, if your kids have never read the book or watched Harry Potter movies (like my 8 year-old twins), then the play “Puffs” is also for you.

The truth is this play may be more for kids than for adults. My kids enjoyed every minute. They could not stop giggling. At times, I was wondering why do they like is so much?

It revolves around an orphan who has a non-magical life and is sent off to a magic boardig school. He meets two friends there with anger issues and low self esteem. Together they go through seven years of learning, fear, struggle, stressful situations and overcoming obstacles and at the end…voila, triumph.

Teachers are not loved in the play, they are even the obstacles.  We accompany the main puff, Wayne Hopkins (played by Zac Moon) through a series of exciting adventures that get increasingly darker. Wayne and his two friends, studious Oliver (played by the wonderful and convincing actor Langston Belton) and Megan (played by Julie Ann Earls), are given very difficult assignments, which they are not sure they can achieve.

The play has many Harry Potter references, but don’t worry if you are not an expert – you and your kids will enjoy the jokes even without the background. Don’t expect magical special effects, but do expect a play with a heart, drive, optimism, sense of humor and encouragement. Puffs make you realize that we are all important. We are all heroes in some way.

Every kid should hear that it’s ok to fail again and again, with failure you get practice and get better.

Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic  plays at the New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street. Tickets are currently on sale through January 14, 2018. Running time is 100 minutes, no intermission. Performances are Thursdays at 7:30 (starting June 8); Fridays at 7:30; Saturdays at 3 and 9:30; and Sundays at 3. Tickets are $51.50 – $79.50. For more information and to purchase tickets visit puffstheplay.com)

Disclosure: Liat was provided with complimentary tickets to review this show but all opinions are her own.

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The Play That Goes Wrong officially opened on Broadway on April 2 at The Lyceum Theatre, after a successful West End run in London. It’s a play I’ve been curious about for some time, so I was thrilled to get the opportunity to review the play this week, with my 14 year-old daughter in tow.

The fun started as soon as we sat down as some of the cast members were interacting with the audience, goofing around. This was very indicative of the sense of humor and type of pranks that would be cast for the next two hours over the course of the show. The show, about an accident-prone university drama society performing a play about a murder mystery, currently features an all American cast. Most do very good British accents. Some don’t, but that’s all part of the fun of the show. The show is total slapstick comedy, a nice reprieve from the current political climate we live in. I rather liked just getting away from reality and entering a farcical world for a night.

The set, which recently won a Tony Award, allows the actors to go completely over the top. It’s almost like another character. As the characters meltdown, so does the set and it ends up coming down as they do. Each actor is very committed to their craft, and some are excellent at slapstick comedy, particularly Alex Mandell, who plays Max, down to the final curtain call (which I mean quite literally as everything on the stage breaks down in the end).

The cast is made up of Ashley Bryant as Annie, Clifton Duncan as Robert, Mark Evans as Chris, Mandell as previously mentioned, Harrison Unger as Dennis, Akron Watson as Trevor, with current understudies Jonathan Fielding and Amelia McClain assuming the roles of Jonathan and Sandra. Preston Truman Boyd, Ned Noyes, Ashley Reyes, and Katie Sexton will also join the production. The set design is by Nigel Hook, lighting design by Ric Mountjoy, sound design by Andy Johnson, and costume design by Roberto Surace.

My teenager laughed her head off, as did everyone around me. If you are looking for a good night out on Broadway that is full of laughter, The Play That Goes Wrong is for you. Bring your kids, partners, friends, whomever needs a good laugh.

Disclosure: I was provided with tickets to facilitate this review but all opinions are my own.

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At the time, the show was ground-breaking.  I had never seen a show so excellently combine music, technology and comedy to create a form of entertainment that defies categorization and appeals to people of all ages. My memories of the show are quite vivid and that is something to say about my aging memory.  So when my tech-obsessed son recently asked me to take him to see the show, I found the idea incredibly exciting.  For both of us. His interest was also a sign that the show’s marketers are doing a very good job promoting the show if he saw it advertised somewhere and discovered the show on his own.

GOOD LUCK!

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