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about: Regina Weinreich

Category: Events

  • James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni: Lesson in Survival: 1971 at the Vineyard Theater

    A young poet, Nikki Giovanni interviewed an elder statesman of letters, James Baldwin, on television in 1971. Enacted, voiced onstage at the Vineyard Theater, Lessons in Survival: 1971, joins a series of plays produced at this downtown venue that makes use of actual words uttered in real life situations to create a theatrical experience: Tina…

  • Battleground: What About Women’s Lives? 

    The abortion debate is personal. If you were around in 1973, as I was, a new hire in the English Department at Brooklyn College, you were privy to the harrowing stories of colleagues who had had unwanted pregnancies. This happened, not because they were reckless, but because of the prevailing notions that women could and…

  • Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song Plus a Concert and a Tribute to Hal Willner at the Tribeca Film Festival

    Music docs at Tribeca have a common thread, record producer Hal Willner. In Angelheaded Hipster, about Mark Bolan and T. Rex, and Hallelujah, a Leonard Cohen biopic through the lens of his now classic song, Willner provides vital information on recordings. His presence in these films prior to his untimely death in the earliest wave…

  • Elvis: Baz Luhrmann’s Burning Love 

    “Man cannot live by Batman alone,” said Baz Luhrmann about making his film of Elvis, and yet the film feels like a wild ride at times. Its great achievement is the casting of Austin Butler who, handsome and talented singing many of the songs we know and love, manages to humanize this historic figure. Young…

  • Meeting Chef Mauro Colagreco: Reinventing Mirazur

    Among the many pleasures of the documentary-rich Tribeca Film Festival, Reinventing Mirazur is particularly yummy, the best word for a film about food. Or rather, the transformation of a multi-star Michelin restaurant in Menton, France during Covid. At center is a brilliant chef, the Argentinian Mauro Colagreco, named best in the world, who expected to…

  • Lost Illusions: A Classy Take on a French Classic

    The French can be vicious, bringing backstabbing to a fine art. Just look at les Liaisons Dangereuses. This year’s winner of seven Cesars, including Best Film, went to Xavier Giannoli’s adaptation of Honore Balzac’s Lost Illusions, a splendidly captivating romp through 19th century Paris via the extravagant “illusions” of a young, determined, and talented poet,…

  • Vik Muniz at the Peter Marino Foundation: “When I See Garbage, I think of You”

    Kicking off a series of intimate talks with artists, Brazilian painter/ collagist Vik Muniz captivated an art-loving crowd at the Peter Marino Foundation in Southampton. In conversation with Peter Marino, his daughter Isabelle Marino, and Bob Colacello. Muniz had an abundance of stories: Having grown up in a Sao Paolo favela, he learned to read…

  • The 66th Viennese Opera Ball: Do I Hear a Waltz!

    As spectacular as many of the gowns worn by celebrities at the recent Met Costume Ball were, they had nothing over the extravagantly clad waltzing couples at the 66th Viennese Opera Ball held at Cipriani 42 Street this week. An annual white tie gala, –floor length gowns for women, white tie and tails for men–the…

  • Downton Abbey: A New Era: Celebrating with Julian Fellowes

    Downton Abbey: A New Era hit the spot! The swell of music, a wedding, I was swept into fandom from the start, at times teary, at other times swooning, and laughing out
loud. Writer Julian Fellowes, brilliant at creating romance, never forgets the real estate. Downton is a place, a grand house where The Granthams, now…

  • Tony Awards Nominees for Grabs: Looking for Hugh Jackman 

    Celebrating the Tony nominations this year held special excitement: it’s the 75th anniversary, the first in-person comeback after Covid, a year of re-emergence for shows shuttered in March 2020. Vaxxed, masked, Covid-tested, journalists met with the nominees in a return to Broadway-as-usual. A dozen or so sat at designated places in a room at the…

  • Mr. Saturday Night: Billy Crystal Has “IT”

    I’ll have what Billy Crystal’s having–stamina. In his show, Mr. Saturday Night, the comedian/ actor/ Oscar host sings and dances with flair, if not youthful energy. Shuffle, low-key moonwalk, at least the man—now in his ‘70’s– has moves, which makes the show’s premise very funny. With a career on the skids, his character, Buddy Young,…

  • Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga in Macbeth: Dressed to Kill

    A highly experimental Scottish play bloodies the Longacre Theater on Broadway. As the audience takes seats, cooks brew in pots (cauldrons) on a set that resembles a downtown city loft. Smoke blowers create a dreamy, sinister atmosphere. One actor, Michael Patrick Thornton, takes center stage, greeting the crowd, asking them to whisper the name of…

  • A Holocaust Symphony Premieres at Carnegie Hall 

    Photo:  Aylin Tekiner The Holocaust continues to unravel secrets. During this period of remembrance, a symphony by a survivor from Salonica, Greece pays homage to his community, its creative artists, and a little-known pocket of wartime history. You know the joke: how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Way more than practice! The music took…

  • How I Learned to Drive Comes to Broadway

    Ewwww! That’s not my critique of Paula Vogel’s tight memory play, How I Learned to Drive– rather the play, now having a Broadway debut after 25 years– is brilliant. It’s the people: the family. At center, Uncle Peck and Li’l Bit (the sublime actors David Morse and Mary-Louise Parker) who originated these roles Off Broadway.…

  • The Little Prince: An Intergalactic Journey on Broadway

    Aerial feats, dance, a touch of Gaul—Antoine Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince at the Broadway Theater brings a beloved children’s classic to the stage with visual flair. Beginning as the book does with a crash landing in the desert, the show moves quickly from scene to scene as a boy in a yellow jumpsuit and yellow…

  • Ben Foster in The Survivor: The Camps Never Leave You

    HBO launches its movie, The Survivor, with a lavish premiere just in time for Holocaust Remembrance Day. Barry Levinson’s latest stars Ben Foster as boxer Harry Haft, Auschwitz survivor and refugee.  As Auschwitz stories go, Harry Haft’s exceeds the norm. Grasping his world in the camps and beyond in Brooklyn, Ben Foster, in the performance…

  • Clive Davis at 90 

    “The thing about turning 90,” quipped music impresario Clive Davis, “is I realized, last year I was 89.” The occasion was a birthday dinner at The River Café that was also a celebration of the Clive Davis Institute at New York University, an educational venue that also features studios where young artists can record their…

  • Oscars So Real in 2022: No Offense Intended

    Despite a contretemps at the Oscars—a slap seen round the world—the ceremony and awards proceeded as expected, apace, with favorites winning all around. When Will Smith accepted his Best Actor award, he tearfully mentioned defending family, as his character Richard Williams did coaching his daughters Venus and Serena to top tennis honors. Of course, Smith…

  • MJ: The Musical: The Art of Michael Jackson

    If you love Michael Jackson, you will love MJ—it’s that simple. The musical limns the controversial performer’s rise to “King of Pop,” avoiding the more difficult challenges of his personality in favor of music and dance—it’s that simple. Not that the star’s dependence on pain killers is not a significant plot issue—it’s that plot is…

  • Lady Gaga’s Passion at the New York Film Critics Circle Dinner at Tao

    Brought to tears in telling the tale of her immigrant ancestry, Lady Gaga thanked the New York Film Critics Circle for recognizing her for Best Actress for her performance in House of Gucci. Big on heart, she was grateful to everyone from director Ridley Scott to her hairdresser and makeup artist, but mainly, she cited…

  • Celebrating Guild Hall at Cipriani 42 Street

    Many revelers at this week’s Guild Hall winter gala remembered that before Covid locked everyone down, they were celebrating the premiere East Hampton cultural institution at its 2020 annual gala. And while much has changed in these two years—the venue was now the cavernous Cipriani 42nd Street—and, the 2022 honorees were Board Chair Marty Cohen…

  • Girl Power: My Brilliant Friend, season 3 on HBO 

    Addiction to the HBO series My Brilliant Friend is second only to a passion for the source, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. That’s why, writing about the eight episodes of season 3, I do not fear spoilers. Faithful to the literature—in fact Ferrante is listed among the script writers—the series follows friends Lenu (Margherita Mazzucco) and…

  • Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster in The Music Man: “There Was Love All Around”

    Harold Hill, a talented conman, who wants to swindle the Midwest town of River City, Iowa, had me at hello. That may owe to the fact that “The Music Man” is played by Hugh Jackman. Arriving on a train, bumping along with salesmen grousing about Hill’s wiles, Hill pays them no mind, singing and dancing…

  • The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Still Marvelous in Season Four

    She’s baaack! Expect funny throughout The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season four, starting with a strip tease in a taxi. No, it’s not what you think. Miriam Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) is acting out, not working, mind you. The opposite of work. She’s been fired from a European tour, and with Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein), the agent…

  • Black No More: A Skin Deep Musical Fantasy

    A new “The New Group” production, Black No More, a musical adaptation of George S. Schuyler’s Afrofuturist 1931 Harlem Renaissance novel, has the feel of something special, theater that may go off the charts in the manner of Hamilton. Black No More opened this week at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Featuring a stellar Broadway…