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Some songs inspire us: “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” “(You Gotta Have) Heart.” Some make us feel optimistic: “Good Times Are Here to Stay.” “Happy Talk.” But how many songs actually help an individual while he’s working? And yet, Ken Bloom says that a song from the 1966 TV special Alice Through the Looking Glass actually […]

And just how important was stereo to 1960s record-buyers? The Music Theater of Lincoln Center’s 1965 production of Kismet, recently re-released by Masterworks Broadway, once again reiterates how potent the Stereo Revolution was. Eleven years earlier, the original cast album of Kismet was issued in monaural, which was then the only option for any recording […]

Only two people ever won a Tony Award for Best Conductor and Musical Director, and he was one of them. And yet, Lehman Engel, who left us thirty-four years ago next week isn’t most remembered for holding the baton in front of Streisand in Wholesale, Roz Russell in Wonderful Town or Elaine Stritch in Goldilocks. […]

A trip to the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario yielded several terrific productions, but the crown jewel was Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd. Artistic director Jackie Maxwell did a superb job of staging, but her greatest achievement was a smart new idea for the show’s most controversial song: Judge Turpin’s “Johanna.” Traditionally it’s […]

  You’ve heard of The Secret Garden, of course, but have you encountered Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book? No, it has nothing to do with the 1991 hit by Marsha Norman, who won a Tony® for her book as well as a nomination that she shared with Lucy Simon, who put […]