Frank Sinatra was far more than the swaggering leader of the “Rat Pack” or the unmistakable voice behind “New York, New York.” He helped elevate popular music into an art form. As Eric Comstock, co-creator and performer of Our Sinatra: a Musical Celebration, observes, “No one did more to make pop music an art form.” This lively production proves his point.
Burt Bacharach made sophistication sound effortless. Songs such as “I Say a Little Prayer” and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” invite an easy singalong, yet their unusual time signatures, surprising chord changes, and demanding vocal ranges can expose an unprepared performer. In ‘Going Bacharach: The Songs of an Icon,’ the singers and musicians meet those challenges with style, precision, and control.
If you want a clear plot, conventional heroes and villains, or an evening free of disturbing material, ‘Les Enfants Terribles’ at East Village Basement is not the play for you.
Picture Coney Island on a sweltering summer day: swimmers crowd the water as the low, insistent pulse of Jaws—“dun-dun… dun-dun…”—grows louder and faster. Suddenly, the beach empties as people scan the waves for a great white shark. This iconic theme from the 1975 film shows how a score can shape an audience’s emotions, sense of time, and perception of narrative tension. The Japan Society highlights that power in ‘Music by Ryuichi Sakamoto’, a film series honoring a composer whose work spans genres and decades. The series opens with the animated feature ‘Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise’.
How can an actor make an audience care about a character who speaks with a ghost, is consumed by his mother’s remarriage, helps drive the woman he loves toward suicide, and kills three men—two of them unarmed? ‘Becoming Hamlet’ answers this by removing the distance between spectator and prince: the audience does not merely observe Hamlet’s turmoil but assumes its many dimensions.
High school is already a battlefield before Westerberg High adds its own brand of cruelty. Students are still trying to figure out who they are while their bodies, teachers, labels, and classmates seem determined to define them first. Nerd, jock, prep, goth, outcast—every label comes with a place in the social order. Worst of all are the cliques: everyone knows which group holds the power, and everyone knows how painful it is to be shut out.
The contemporary film industry is overlooking an entire audience: tweens (between eight and twelve). Too often, the action available to them is fantasy-driven, such as Harry Potter or Marvel stories, rather than live-action films set in the real world.
Set inside the intimate 50-seat Sgouros Theatre, part of the historic Players Theatre in the heart of Greenwich Village, Masticate immediately places the audience close to the action.
What happens to jazz musicians after the final note? In One Night at the Blackbird, Maria Messias Mendes and Thomas Mullen imagine an afterlife where the music keeps playing inside a New Orleans funeral parlor.
For 77 years, the Gene Frankel Theatre has been part of New York’s theater community. Its mission has always been to build an audience that shares the thrill of live theater.