Tweens, that precocious generation between the ages of 8 and 15, have turned “High School Musical” into a cash cow for Disney. They made the Jonas Brothers (ages 17, 16 and 13 when they formed their band in 2005) one of the hottest acts in the music business today. They put 15 year-old Miley Cyrus on the cover of Vanity Fair this year. And they even helped Broadway’s Wicked become the international girl-powerhouse that it is. So as I sat watching the new musical 13 that opened on Sunday at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, I found myself wondering “Why didn’t someone think of this before?
This is a musical about 13 year-olds, starring a cast of 13 in which no one is older than 18 and even the onstage band is composed of players who probably just began to shave and wear bras. Unlike most of the shows aimed at this demographic (Wicked, Legally Blonde, The Little Mermaid), 13 has its eye on the boys who feel they’ve outgrown The Lion King. In fact, Broadway seems to be going a bit boy crazy this season because both the upcoming shows Billy Elliot and Shrek are aiming for the same audience.
Thirteen tells the story of Evan Goldman, a New York kid whose mother moves him to Indiana after his parents divorce and just a few months before he’s due to celebrate his bar mitzvah. The plot centers around Evan’s efforts to fit in with the kids at his new school so that they’ll join the festivities marking his entry into manhood. The book is by Dan Elish (who’s written such kid-friendly novels as “Born Too Short: The Confessions of an Eighth-Grade Basket Case”) and TV writer Robert Horn. And the music and lyrics are by Jason Robert Brown, composer of the Tony Award-winning score for Parade and the critically acclaimed The Last Five Years.
The whole idea is so smart and appealing that I really wanted to like 13. But, alas, I didn’t. It’s not the fault of the kids in the cast, who are, for the most part, talented and comfortable onstage, particularly Graham Phillips, who played Evan at the performance my friend Priscilla and I attended (he’s scheduled to take Saturday nights off). Phillips has the kind of bright, easy, and yes seductive, charm that brings to mind a junior version of the “M*A*S*H”-era mensch Alan Alda.
Other standouts include the clarion-voiced Allie Trimm as Patrice, the nice-but-non-cool girl who lives next door to Evan; and Aaron Simon Gross as Archie, a kid who gets around on crutches and a strong sense of humor. And even the young band plays well, although some of the heavy lifting is done by conductor and keyboardist Tom Kitt, whose last spin on Broadway was as the composer of the short-lived High Fidelity.
But aside from Kitt and director Jeremy Sams, who does a good job with such as young cast, I blame the show’s shortcomings on the grown-ups involved in the production. While its tunes are poppy and its lyrics witty (click here to hear a sampling), 13 struck me as the kind of show that adults think kids will find cool rather than a show that kids actually do find cool.
And I was totally turned off by how it fed into stereotypes. Does Indiana really have to be, as one song calls it, “the lamest place in the world” to live? Does the school jock have to be the predictably dumbest kid in the school? Does the blonde girl have to be the one that all the boys want? Does everyone have to be so thoroughly grossed out when two boys accidentally kiss?
Yeah, I know. I’m no where near the demographic 13 is hoping to draw. And I admit the audience the night I attended, heavily sprinkled with kids, seemed to enjoy the show, which runs just over 90 minutes. Even I got a kick out of seeing each young cast member show off in the joyful finale. And Priscilla, whose youngest is 14, said she's going to go back with her daughter and thinks that kids will like it. So what do I know? I don't even own any Jonas Brothers records.
Is there a serious actress in the last 100 years who hasn’t done, at some time in her career, Nina’s monologue about the theater in the fourth act of The Seagull? The play, of course, centers around the older Irina Arkadina and Kristin Scott Thomas, who won an Olivier for her portrayal of that self-involved actress in last year's much acclaimed London production, gets top billing, a big photo on the Playbill and the solo curtain call for the 14-week transfer that recently opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre. But it is Carey Mulligan, stunning as Nina, who hijacks this production.
The Seagull is a keystone of modern theater. Like his young protagonist, the fledgling playwright Konstantin, played in the current production with a desperate, hollow-eyed intensity by Mackenzie Crook, Anton Chekhov wanted to move beyond the realist melodramas that dominated the stage in his day and to push further into the territory pioneer by Ibsen and Strindberg. But the 1896 premiere of The Seagull famously flopped. The audience booed all through the performance, the actress playing Nina became so unnerved that she lost her voice during the show and Chekhov himself, fled from the audience, hid out backstage and vowed never to write another play. A production at the Moscow Art Theatre two years later, directed by the great Constantin Stanislavski, who also took on the role of Trigorin, the more accomplished writer in the play, was a great success, launching Chekhov and theater as we know it.
I’ve seen several versions of The Seagull over the years, including the celebrated Public Theatre production in 2001 that starred Meryl Streep as Arkadina, Kevin Kline as Trigorin, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Konstantin and Natalie Portman as Nina. I also saw Regina Taylor’s poorly received all-black 2004 adaptation of the story, Drowning Crow, with Alfre Woodard in the Arkadina role. And just six months ago, I saw the Classic Stage Company’s production with Dianne Wiest as Arkadina and Alan Cumming as Trigorin. I’ve respected the ingenuity of some productions, admired the aspirations of others but I’ve never really been moved. Until now.
Like all four of Chekhov’s great country estate plays, The Seagull is simultaneously comic and tragic. Most productions struggle about which quality should be given more weight. This one gets the balance right. Christopher Hampton can claim part of the credit. His new translation of the play is colloquial without sounding trivial. You get the feeling that if Chekhov were writing in English today, these are the exact words he would have chosen. Ian Rickson’s direction is equally lucid and he clearly knows how to cast a play.
Chekhov gives all of the characters in The Seagull a chance to spread their wings and the actors in this production, even those in the smaller supporting roles, soar. Peter Wright brings a wistful poignancy to Sorin, Arkadina’s older brother who regrets the choices he’s made in his life. Art Malik is wry and amusing as Dorn, the doctor who is close to the family.
In fact, the only one who seemed earthbound to me was Peter Sarsgaard as Trigorin, the writer who is the young lover in Arkadina’s life and angles to be the older one in Nina’s. I get that Trigorin is supposed to be on to the fact that he’s something of a poseur and I’ve loved Sarsgaard in indie films like “Kinsey” and “Shattered Glass” but his Trigorin is too laid back and lacks the sex appeal that would make it 
clear why either woman might want him. The Nigerian-British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who recently won the Olivier for his portrayal of Othello, played Trigorin in London and I’ve read that he brought an appealing insouciance—and sexiness—to the role that I wished we Yanks had been able to see.
Still, I’m glad I got to see Scott Thomas and Mulligan. Scott Thomas, still most famous for her role in the 1996 movie “The English Patient”, gets all of Arkadina’s haughtiness but she also gets the character’s awareness of what that arrogance has cost. She deserves the praise she’s getting. But Mulligan, just 22, and largely unknown on this side of the ocean, gives an even more heartbreaking performance. Nina will never be the great actress that Arkadina is and yet Mulligan in that final speech makes it clear that the theater is also in Nina’s blood too and that she, too, is willing to pay any price for the privilege to be even a small part of it. And what theater lover wouldn’t be moved by that?
Tovah Feldshuh has a knack for playing singular women. Three years ago, she took on Golda Meir in Golda’s Balcony, William Gibson’s one-hander about the former Israeli prime minister, and turned that portrayal into the longest running one-woman show in Broadway history. So when Feldshuh walked onto the stage of the Baruch Performing Arts Center and began speaking directly to the audience at the start of her new show Irena’s Vow, I figured we were in for another solo affair. I was wrong. This true story of a Polish Catholic woman who hid Jews from the Nazis has a cast of 10. But I wasn’t completely wrong. The most commanding presence on that stage is Feldshuh.
And I hadn’t expected anything less. Feldshuh has been commanding attention since she was the undisputed star of the theater department at Sarah Lawrence College when we were both students there some 40 years ago. Back then, I, a small-talent freshman, was too intimidated to speak to her, the big-talent senior, but I’ve followed her career ever since. Her first big break was, coincidentally, in the 1978 TV miniseries “Holocaust”, where her co-stars included Rosemary Harris, Sam Wanamaker, Fritz Weaver and a couple of other newcomers named James Woods and Meryl Streep.
By that time, Feldshuh had already dropped the less-ethnic sounding stage name she’d adopted, Terri Fairchild, and was proudly embracing her Jewishness by using her distinctively Hebrew name Tovah. That pride in her heritage has remained a motivating force for Feldshuh, both personally and professionally—be it raising money for Jewish causes or adding beyond-stereotype grit to the Jewish women she played in movies like “Kissing Jessica Stein” and TV shows like “Law & Order” where she has a recurring role as the no-nonsense defense attorney Danielle Melnick.
Feldshuh’s latest character Irena isn’t Jewish but Irena’s story continues Tovah’s mission. (Click here to read an interview she gave Peter Filichia before previews for Irena’s Vow began.) Like Oskar Schindler, Irena Gut Opdyke was one of the “Righteous” gentiles who risked her life to save Jews during the Holocaust. After helplessly watching Nazis bash the head of a Jewish infant in the street, Irena, then barely 20, vowed that she would do whatever she could to help future victims. And so while working as a housekeeper for a Nazi officer, she hid a dozen Jews in his basement and when he eventually discovered them, she became his mistress to keep him from betraying her friends.
The play presents this inspirational story as a flashback, book-ended by a lecture the 70 year-old Irena gives to a group of high school students in L.A., where she immigrated after the war. (She eventually became a well-known interior decorator and died in 2003, two weeks after her 85th birthday.) Dan Gordon’s script, based on the memoir Irena wrote, adds leavening humor where it can, Michael Parva’s direction adds suspense even though we know the story will end with Irena's survival and the talented cast makes it all believable, even though Feldshuh spends most of the 90-minute play portraying a woman less than half her age.
Despite these good efforts, the show still carries the sermonizing air of one of those old uplifting "After School Specials". Of course, it’s almost impossible for this kind of Holocaust tale to do anything else. And its message remains a vital one, particularly as revisionists continue to deny the genocide that occurred and new masters of mass slaughter continue to kill millions of others around the world.
The audience at the Baruch Center didn’t need to be reminded about the lessons of the Holocaust but it clearly appreciated the retelling. You could hear people trying to stifle sobs at the performance my friend Lisa and I attended. The woman sitting right in front of us, who seemed particularly moved by the events onstage, turned out to be the real Irena’s daughter, Jeannie Smith (Click here to read about her and another Irena "descendant").
Quieting the applause at the curtain call, Feldshuh introduced Smith to the audience and brought her on stage to answer questions about her mother. The play, of course, has a special meaning for Smith. “It’s been five years since my mother died and I miss her every day,” she told the cast, barely able to hold back tears. “Thank you for bringing her back to life for these 90 minutes.”
Video projections of the actual Irena show a tall blonde woman who looked nothing like the petite brunette Feldshuh but I know what Smith means. The spirit is clearly the same. Indomitable.
Two people could get great seats to a Broadway show for under $50 in the fall of 1974 and my friend Phil and I, both recent college graduates and desperate to be thought sophisticated theatergoers, took turns buying tickets for us to see the hottest shows. None was hotter that season than Equus, Peter Shaffer’s play about a stable boy who blinds six horses and the psychiatrist who struggles to help him see what drove him to commit such a horrendous crime.
A newcomer named Peter Firth played the disturbed youth, Anthony Hopkins was the anguished shrink, and the show was famous for its sextet of strapping young men wearing metal equine-shaped masks to represent the horses, the climatic scene when the young protagonist wore nothing at all, and the questions the play posed about the relationships between madness, passion, creativity, and faith. I was blown away by it.
But I confess that’s not why I was so interested in seeing the revival of Equus that opened at the Broadhurst Theatre this week, following a celebrated run in London last year. Like everyone else, I wanted to see if Daniel Radcliffe, the young Brit who plays the boy wizard Harry Potter in the movies, could work magic on stage.
He does.
People may go to see Harry Potter pull a full monty. But what Radcliffe’s performance reveals is a naked intensity that makes it clear he’s a real actor as well as a movie star. And the grin on his face at the curtain call makes it equally apparent what pleasure he takes in being onstage. (Click here to read a profile of him in Details magazine, complete with a video interview and slide show of photos in his dressing room.)
Yet Radcliffe’s presence in the play may also upend it. In the original production, attention flowed towards the psychiatrist (Hopkins was succeeded by such heavyweights as Richard Burton and Anthony Perkins) but this time around, all eyes veer towards the boy and his story. Part of that is due to Radcliffe’s celebrity, another part to his brave and bravura performance but still another to the way that Richard Griffiths, the Tony Award winner two years ago for his role in The History Boys, plays the doctor.
My old pal Phil, who saw Equus a couple of weeks before I did, told me he missed the sexiness that Hopkins brought to the role. I didn’t mind that. In fact, I think the walrus-shaped Griffiths looks more like a man who has repressed his passions than his more glamorous predecessors did. But the talented Griffiths’ quiet, nuanced interpretation of the doctor’s own awakening lacks the thrill of an “aha” moment for me.
But even without that, I enjoyed this Equus, particularly its theatricality; we get so little of that in straight plays these days. Director Thea Sharrock smartly borrows a good deal of the stagecraft from the original production, even bringing back John Napier to do updated versions of the stylish costumes and sets he did 30 years ago. David Hersey’s lighting and Gregory Clarke’s sound design help create the appropriately unsettling mood.
The buff actors playing the horses are fittingly both scary and sexy. Anna Camp is lovely as the young girl who fancies the boy and unwittingly provokes the disaster. But not everything works. Kate Mulgrew as the judge who persuades the doctor to take the boy’s case delivers a cacophony of “aha” moments. Oskar Eustis, the head of the Public Theater, was sitting in front of me (the audience the night I attended was peppered with theater insiders—Joe Masteroff, the book writer of such classics as Cabaret and She Loves Me, was sitting on my right) and Eustis literally flinched each time Mulgrew spoke.
No matter. It is Radcliffe’s show. I invited my niece Jennifer to see Equus with me. She’s a rabid Harry Potter fan—having read all seven books and seen all five films—and so she went into the theater excited about being able to see the boy who plays him. But she left enchanted by the man he's become. “You know,” she said. “He’s a really good actor.”
There is a lovely moment in the second act of the Classic Stage Company’s new production of The Tempest when the cast members join together in song. Soaring above the other voices is a distinctive tenor, almost ethereal, irresistibly seductive. Even if his name weren’t in the program or his face on the poster for the show, anyone who knows anything about theater over the last 30 years would recognize it instantly as belonging to Mandy Patinkin, the original Che in Evita and the original George in Sunday in the Park with George. Truly one of a kind, Patinkin has returned to the New York stage for the first time in eight years in the role of the sorcerer Prospero and brought with him a reminder of the unique qualities that define real star power (click here to read a revealing interview with him).
As you may remember from your college lit days, The Tempest, which is believed to be the last play Shakespeare wrote alone, tells the story of Prospero, the magic-loving Duke of Milan who is cheated out of his kingdom by his brother and marooned on a mystical island with his daughter Miranda. Among the isle’s inhabitants are Ariel, a sprite who becomes his right-hand factotum, and Caliban, an ungainly native whom he enslaves. As the play opens, a storm shipwrecks the duplicitous brother, his ally the king of Naples and their courtiers on the island, setting the stage for Prospero to take his revenge.
Like so much of the Bard’s work, The Tempest provides opportunities for lots of different actors to show-off. Elisabeth Waterston, the willowy daughter of Sam Waterston, best known for his 18 seasons on TV’s “Law & Order” but also an accomplished Shakespearean actor, is completely charming as Miranda. Her declaration-of-love scene with Ferdinand, the young prince of Naples, winningly played by Stark Sands, is another one of the production’s highlights.
Meanwhile, Angel Desai makes Ariel a character of appealing substance. And Tony Torn and Steven Rattazzi add much—perhaps too much—comic relief in the roles of the clownish servants Trinculo and Stefano. Only Nyambi Nyambi, far too handsome to play the grotesque Caliban, seems miscast despite his painted body and attempts to lumber awkwardly and literally froth at the mouth.
In the end, though, The Tempest is Prospero’s show and each production’s success rests heavily on the actor playing him. I’m not a big Patinkin fan (due in part, I suspect, to all the reports about his bad backstage behavior during the short run of Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party back in 2000) but I was enchanted by that musical scene in the second act of The Tempest and by his performance in the rest of the play as well. Patinkin brings the full force of his idiosyncratic self to the role. His Prospero is more robustly philosophical than whimsically vulnerable, speaks with a cadence more Yiddish than Shakespearean. And it all works.
Watching Patinkin made me think about how rare it is to see such a singular performance these days. New York is brimming over with good actors but that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean actors who are literally like no one else—the way Ethel Merman, Mary Martin and Robert Morse were back in the Golden Age of Broadway and the way Patti LuPone, Kristin Chenoweth and Patinkin are now.
But the trend seems to be moving in the opposite direction, towards stars with less wattage. Over the past couple of years, producers here and in London have turned to "American Idol"-style contests to cast their shows. I can’t imagine Patinkin (or, for that matter, LuPone or even Chenoweth) making it past the first round—too intense, not endearing enough, so unpredictable. Which, of course, is what makes him so mesmerizing onstage. And which is why you should see his Prospero. Luckily, the run has been extended through Oct. 19.
Critics and theater geeks were sharpening the blades of their guillotines weeks before the new musical A Tale of Two Cities opened at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on Thursday. The crimes committed by this latest adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel set during the French Revolution were deemed to be legion.
For starters, the book, music and lyrics were all written by one woman no one had ever heard of: Jill Santoriello, a 42-year old Sarah Palinish-upstart who had never been involved in a Broadway production before, who proudly declared that she had taught herself music, and who admitted to having never read any other Dickens novel besides the one she first began muscializing when she was still in high-school. (Click here to read an interview with her).
Then, there was the fact that the show’s leading man had gotten himself involved in a sex scandal earlier this year (click here to read an article about him). And, instead of coming in from one of the prestigious incubators of musicals like London, La Jolla, or Seattle, this production got its start at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Florida. Meanwhile its novice team of producers—there are 20 of them—were lead by a husband-and-wife pair of former actors who had once been replacements in the original production of Les Misérables. Oh, the horror of it all. Off with all their heads.
Now, the contrarian in me would love to tell you that the naysayers were all wrong. But while A Tale of Two Cities is far, far from being the worst show I’ve ever seen, it’s an equal distance from being the best. I’m a Dickens fan. My mother gave me a copy of "A Tale of Two Cities," one of her favorites, as a Christmas present when I was eight. It was too early for me to appreciate it then but a few years later, I was swept away by the story of Sydney Carton’s willingness to sacrifice himself for the woman he loved. (And I’m not violating my anti-spoiler rule of not giving away the plot; the novel is on nearly every high school reading list, so if you don’t know the ending, shame on you.)
I’m also one of the few New York theater geeks who got a kick out of The Scarlet Pimpernel, Frank Wildhorn's overblown 1997 musical about a British aristocrat who rescues innocents from the guillotine during the French Reign of Terror that followed the French Revolution. So despite all the pre-opening carping, I was ready to show some mercy towards A Tale of Two Cities. But from the first few notes, I knew that my heart wasn't going to be quite big enough for the task at hand.
The score sounded both familiar and forgettable. It also seemed as though Santoriello and her collaborators had never seen any other show than Les Misérables. The music sounded much the same as in the Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil megamusical, just not as memorable. Richard Pilbrow’s somnolent lighting seemed the same. David Zinn’s period costumes seemed the same. Even Tony Walton’s skeletal mobile set seemed almost the same.
Many of the actors are the same. Greg Edelman, the replacement for the relentless detective Javert in the original Les Miz, plays the honorable Dr. Manette in A Tale of Two Cities. Three actors who played Thénardier, the comedic tavern owner in Les Misérables, also have roles in the new show. And I didn’t have time to read through the bios of the entire 38-member cast to count all the others who had put in time on the barricades in Les Miz.
It’s actually its cast that saves A Tale of Two Cities. I know I keep saying this but the talent pool here in New York is incredible. And even though they were singing only so-so songs, the singers in A Tale of Two Cities are superb. Nearly all of the critics, even those who didn't like the show, swooned for James Barbour, who plays the lead role of Sydney Carton. He's too contemporary for my taste—putting a kind of David Lettermanish-who-gives-a-damn spin on Dickens’ hero— but I have no complaints about his powerful baritone.
Nor do I have anything bad to say about Brandi Burkhardt, a lovely-to-look-at-and-lovely-to-hear soprano, as Lucie Manette, the object of his love. I’ve read that Aaron Lazar is equally good as Lucie’s husband, the reluctant French nobleman Charles Darnay, but Lazar strained a vocal chord during previews and his doctor ordered him to skip the performance I attended. His understudy Michael Halling went on at the last minute and cast members applauded when he came out to take his curtain call bow. The audience that night cheered them all. Fans like these kept the similarly-themed and equally-panned The Scarlet Pimpernel running for two years and, who knows, they might do the same for A Tale of Two Cities.
In the meantime, if there’s anyone who should be celebrated here, it’s the 20 folks who put up the reportedly $16 million to put on A Tale of Two Cities. It’s easy to make fun of them. They all seem to be Broadway newbies. Instead of listing past credits, their Playbill bios say things like “Nancy is an avid equestrian, golfer and skier who loves travel and Broadway.” And yet, they believed in theater enough to dig into their pockets and come up with the money to support a huge cast and to give a newcomer a shot at the big time. Regardless of what you think about the resulting show, you've got to admit that nowadays those are truly revolutionary acts.
“Write what you know” is the advice teachers used to give beginning writers. No one seems to have taken that more to heart than the wordsmiths who worked in the writers’ room for Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows.” They famously included Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon and Carl Reiner, whose 1958 memoir “Enter Laughing” has been turned into the new show Enter Laughing: The Musical that opened at the York Theatre Company last week.
Reiner and his colleagues have told the same coming-of-age story so many times over the years that most of us know it as well as we know the ones about our own kin. In these tales, a gawky but endearing young man yearns for a career in show biz, has obstacles thrown in his way (often by his well-meaning but straitlaced Jewish family,) circumvents them by apprenticing himself to a theatrical blowhard with a heart of gold and in the end, gets his big break and entry into the glorious fraternity of show people.
Even though their TV show was helping to kill it off, the Caesar boys longed for the old Tin Pan Alley-era of entertainment that was already beginning to fade into memory. I have a fondness for that world too. So I didn’t mind at all indulging in Enter Laughing’s smile-inducing double scoop of nostalgia.
The show is the latest in a string of adaptations of Reiner’s fond look back at his star-struck youth. The original book was a bestseller. A 1963 stage version played for 419 performances and made a star of Alan Arkin, who won a Tony for playing Reiner’s fictionalized version of his younger self. But a 1967 movie that featured José Ferrer, Shelley Winters, Elaine May, and Don Rickles in supporting roles fared less well and a 1976 musical, So Long, 174th Street, with a 44-year-old Robert Morse playing the ambitious teen, flopped, lasting just six performances.
Now, a name change and a terrific cast lead by Josh Grisetti, a young newcomer with the appealingly loose-limbed and rubber-faced demeanor of a natural comedian but whose only previous claim to fame had been playing in the Las Vegas company of Spamalot, has rescued the show. Kind of.
This new production of Enter Laughing is funny and it’s fun too. But it helps if you’re of a certain age. The showstopper is performed (marvelously) by the 85-year-old George S. Irving, who made his Broadway debut in the original production of Oklahoma, and its references are to such erstwhile screen hotties as Hedy Lamarr, Joan Crawford and Constance Bennett. The entire score, by Stan Daniels, the late legendary sitcom writer, producer and director who apparently studied at the Mel Brooks School of Songwriting, is filled with witty lyrics set to jaunty but lightweight tunes.
Still, director Stuart Ross, who created Forever Plaid, knows how to keep a crowd-pleaser moving. Music director Matt Castle not only plays the piano and leads the tiny but able band but takes an amusing acting turn as well. The rest of the cast—which includes the husband and wife team of Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry from the old “L.A. Law” TV series—is energetic too. Together, they all create the kind of evanescent entertainment that might have made great sketch material for the old Caesar show. And if you’re nostalgic for that kind of an evening then this show could be your show of shows.
Tweens, that precocious generation between the ages of 8 and 15, have turned “High School Musical” into a cash cow for Disney. They made the Jonas Brothers (ages 17, 16 and 13 when they formed their band in 2005) one of the hottest acts in the music business today. They put 15 year-old Miley Cyrus on the cover of Vanity Fair this year. And they even helped Broadway’s Wicked become the international girl-powerhouse that it is. So as I sat watching the new musical 13 that opened on Sunday at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, I found myself wondering “Why didn’t someone think of this before?
