Critic at Large

A minority view on 'Matilda'

4 Comments By Jeffrey Sweet | April 16, 2013
I don’t say this to be contrary, but I think that Hands on a Hardbody was a better show than Matilda is. Matilda seems to be the runaway hit of the season and generally got enthusiastic notices.  I haven’t read the Roald Dahl ...
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Rodgers and Hammerstein and Cinderella

3 Comments By Jeffrey Sweet | March 27, 2013
In 1957, CBS commissioned the top Broadway songwriting team to write a family musical. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II came up with a seventy-six minute (ninety when the commercials were added) adaptation of the fairy tale, Cinderella. ...
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Hit the Wall

1 Comment By Jeffrey Sweet | March 19, 2013
I was living in an apartment in lower Manhattan when the events dramatized in Ike Holter’s play Hit the Wall took place.  On the morning of June 28, 1969, I woke up and was unaware of what had happened overnight a short walk ...
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Wanderings

2 Comments By Jeffrey Sweet | March 7, 2013
The other morning, I’m sitting in my local diner with a couple who live in my building on New York’s Upper West Side. One of them is Elizabeth Winthrop (you might know her from her classic fantasy novel for young people, Castle in the ...
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'Cat' and 'Picnic' again

4 Comments By Jeffrey Sweet | February 15, 2013
Tennessee Williams discovered William Inge. Inge was writing for the St. Louis Times, and he was tremendously moved by The Glass Menagerie. He interviewed Williams. The two hit it off. Inge confessed he was an aspiring playwright. Williams asked ...
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