recent posts

about: Regina Weinreich

Category: Theater

  • Blair Underwood’s Ecstatic Face in The Pack, a Virtual Premiere at Guild Hall

    The season would not be eh, the season without all-star comedy from Eugene Pack. He was back virtually on Sunday premiering a program of 3 short works to benefit Guild Hall, starring Matthew Broderick and John Leguizamo performing together for the first time, Blair Underwood and Sherri Shepherd, and Rachel Dratch, Cecily Strong, Andrea Martin,…

  • Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin Star in a Revival of Same Time, Next Year to Benefit Guild Hall, Directed by Bob Balaban

    In case you were wondering what A-list actors were up to sequestered in the time of COVID-19, Bob Balaban works hard as ever from his home in Sagaponack, developing content for when “the gates are lifted,” and looking to help the community. With an idea for supporting Guild Hall, he got Alec Baldwin who got…

  • Guild Hall Hosts A Revived Reading of Tennessee Williams

    The works of Tennessee Williams are a goldmine for veteran actors, and Guild Hall has a rich history of producing his plays. At one such event, here’s how it went for a reporter and Eli Wallach. How old am I? asked Eli Wallach playfully. The occasion was a staged reading of works by Tennessee Williams…

  • Remembering Jerry Stiller

    Of course, everyone remembers Jerry Stiller as George Costanza’s father on Seinfeld. Festivus? Remember the holiday of Festivus famously celebrated by George’s dad? Way before that he was the Stiller of Stiller & Meara, one of the greatest comedy teams ever, with his wife Ann Meara. And, as if I were paying a shiva call…

  • Remembering Michael McClure

    A West Coast beat, Michael McClure was less of a presence in New York than the seminal figures: Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, but he was no less of a master poet, combining his love of nature with traditional forms such as villanelles, sonnets and sestinas. One of the last beat poets, Michael McClure (87) died this…

  • Felt Sad, Posted a Frog (and other streams of global quarantine): What is “Essential?”

    The writer/ editor Gordon Lish used to say, riffing off a groaner of a joke, “Everyone has to be somewhere.” For characters in isolation in a new play inspired by the moment, Felt Sad, Posted a Frog (and other streams of global quarantine), the location is all over the place. That, of course, is the…

  • A Star-Studded Tribute for Stephen Sondheim at 90: He’s “Still Here”

    To fete beloved Stephen Sondheim at 90 in song for two and a half hours, an A-list of Broadway stars zoomed in. Sure, you don’t get the wow production, the pageantry, the costumes and sets of a live musical, but what you do get is that up close emotion that the internet allows, as if…

  • Jesse Eisenberg in Resistance: Remembering Marcel Marceau as Holocaust Hero

    One of the last great New York nights was the opening of The Girl from North Country on Broadway, nearly a month ago. Among the guests crowding into the Belasco was Jesse Eisenberg. By coincidence I had just that afternoon seen his latest film Resistance, and still recovering from the power of this Holocaust survival…

  • Apropos of Nothing: Woody Allen’s View from the Top

    Back in the day, I knew a journalist who had a crush on Woody Allen, and joined a club with others similarly besotted. Witty and smart, this bespectacled nerd made them laugh, and that was sexy. Cut to Woody Allen today, a man in his ‘80’s trying to clear his name. His new book, Apropos…

  • Terrence McNally Remembered

    Inevitable that the current virus would claim the life of someone up close and personal. The pleasures of Terrence McNally’s work in theater have been a staple of New York’s Broadway and off experience for decades. In June 2019, I saw a revival of his Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, his writing…

  • Girl From the North Country at the Belasco Theater: Dark Drama With Dylan’s Music

    The musical, Girl From the North Country, newly landed on Broadway at the Belasco Theater after sellout runs in London and at the Public Theater, imagines what you can do if you match up a brilliant storyteller, Conor McPherson, with a brilliant songwriter, Bob Dylan. And that’s without either one of them having met, spoken,…

  • All the Natalie Portmans at the MCC Theater

    A white girl in a black tutu pirouettes onstage in a dour apartment, a fantasy vision of Natalie Portman in Black Swan. Reminiscent of other works with movie stars in the name (Being John Malkovitch/ Searthing for Debra Winger), All the Natalie Portmans, an off- Broadway debut by C. A. Johnson at the MCC Theater,…

  • Salman Rushdie Commands The Rainbow Room at the Guild Hall Academy of the Arts Awards

    Even against a gloomy sky, The Rainbow Room with its magnificent city views defied yesterday’s weather, an impending pandemic, democrats duking it out. At Guild Hall’s most festive winter celebration, honoring achievement in the arts and philanthropy, serenity reigned, although most honorees greeted guests and neighbors with fist bumps and elbows over the usual bear…

  • Remembering Rip Torn: R. I. P. Rip

    At the Greenwich House Theater for a memorial for Rip Torn, awesome clips revealed the evolution of this legendary actor’s astonishing film career from Baby Doll (1956) to Bible epics through roles as a good guy and then menacing bad ass, onto his Emmy winning television work on “The Larry Shandling Show” and “30 Rock”…

  • Celebrating Sondheim with the New York Philharmonic: Joy on New Year’s Eve

    Photo: Regina Weinreich Introducing this evening, Bernadette Peters cautioned the audience at Lincoln Center’s Geffen Hall, "Sweeney Todd"'s Mrs. Lovett will not be singing about baking shepherd pies with real shepherds a featured ingredient. Not that it mattered. This would be Stephen Sondheim composer, and except for two numbers from Follies with the outstanding Katrina…

  • Is This a Room at the Vineyard Theater: Arresting Reality

    No wonder the whistleblower won’t reveal him/herself. You know, the one who called out the infamous quid pro quo presidential phone call with Ukraine. See Is This a Room at the Vineyard Theater, a transcript made into a riveting drama, to see how those who cross the current American regime are treated. Perhaps you already…

  • Cats: The World Premiere: T. S. Eliot, Can You Hear Jennifer Hudson?

    The latest entry into the Oscar race is Cats, a feature adaptation of the now iconic Andrew Lloyd Weber musical based on T. S. Eliot. I must mention “The Wasteland” poet because at no time during the state of the art premiere this week at Alice Tully Hall did anyone acknowledge this bona fide cred.…

  • The Illusionists: Magic of the Holidays at the Neil Simon Theater: If You Can Believe

     “Do you believe in real magic?” Many must, as the line to enter the Neil Simon theater wrapped around the block—whole families– for a recent performance of The Illusionists. This yearly holiday themed event features a rotating troupe of internationally acclaimed magicians, a crowd pleaser as it cajoles the audience with comedy and Vegas styled…

  • David Amram: Celebrating Greenwich Village at the Museum of the City of New York

    Photo: Regina Weinreich At 89, David Amram is not slowing down. Celebrating his birthday at the Museum of the City of New York, and an exhibition of Fred McDarragh’s iconic photos from Greenwich Village back in the day, Amram, as times nicknamed “jamram,” led a jazz quintet: a brilliant Vic Juris on guitar, Rene Hart…

  • The New York Public Library’s Literary Lions Gala by the Book

    A bookish night at the New York Public Library, the Literary Lions gala celebrates writers. Charlie Rose attended, and was ensconced in conversation as pigs in blankets were passed. Jean Doumanian confessed to hating long cocktail hours, but the gabfest went on for a while. Writers do have stories. Julie Taymor is finishing her film…

  • Tom Hiddleston in Betrayal: Star Power on 45th Street

    Marital infidelity is that slippery slope, just ask the characters in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal in a superb revival at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. Coming from a fictional literary elite, meaning they are also verbally gifted, and would have to be for Pinter’s poetry, Jerry (Charlie Cox) and Emma (Zawe Ashton) think they’ve gotten away…

  • Jules Feiffer at 90: Guild Hall Celebrates with an All-Star Reading of A Bad Friend

    Starring Oscar awarded F. Murray Abraham and Mercedes Ruehl, the reading of Jules Feiffer’s 2003 play A Bad Friend at Guild Hall, could not have featured more good friends. Under the expert direction of Harris Yulin who also read, along with the outstanding Tedra Millan, Dave Quay, and Josh Gladstone, one of the East End’s…

  • Hamptons Journal: Jenni Muldaur/ Hearts Aflame at Guild Hall/ Bryan Adams Rocks Out at the Parrish

    Singer Jenni Muldaur brought a party to Guild Hall for the holiday weekend, doing duets with performers who she’s assured the stellar crowd,are really truly her friends. What a night: the Wainrights, father and son, Loudon the 3rd, and Rufus, plus Teddy Thompson, and Isaac Mizrahi who joined in—briefly– for Leonard Cohen’s “Halleluliah!” We were…

  • Rob Reiner, Visiting the Hamptons, Reads Mr. T at Celebrity Autobiography

    Photo: Roger Friedman Rob Reiner was the surprise guest at Guild Hall for Celebrity Autobiography, a riotous show based on a single conceit. It’s not that the lives of celebrities are merely a hoot, but that read aloud, the unintentional humor is mind-blowing. Case in point, Tiger Woods’ sexual innuendo describing his golf strategies in…

  • Annie Get Your Gun at Bay Street Theater: Can You Get a Man With a Gun?

    Even before its third show of the season opened this weekend, Bay Street’s revival of the 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun was extended. The demand was that great, for Irving Berlin’s classic songbook score, and Dorothy Fields’ clever lyrics for such standards: “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly,” and many…