An entertaining diversion for fans until the curtains rise again.
Broadway stages a comeback.
As the 1990s began, the Broadway neighborhood hit the skids. Off to see London-imported hits such as The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, and Cats, New York theatergoers sidestepped crack vials and prostitutes. However, Broadway was ripe for a resurrection, which longtime New York Post theater columnist Riedel follows in his brisk, insightful, and deliciously detailed take on the decade. For sure, the author serves up great dish: For example, appearing in a hit revival of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, Elaine Stritch, clad only in bra and panties, darts into the crowded theater lobby just before curtain time to check on her house seats. But Riedel is after more than tales of outrageous antics. He chronicles the plays and musicals that brought great American theater back to a spiffed-up Times Square. A poignant and suspenseful chapter follows Jonathan Larson, waiting tables in a lower Manhattan diner while determined to stage a modern-day La Bohème as transported to New York’s Lower East Side and called Rent. The brilliant Larson died at 35 from a rare illness, just as his musical became a megahit that garnered the Pulitzer Prize. At the same time, Riedel chronicles an infamous rivalry on 42nd Street. Fresh from his failure as head of Cineplex Odeon, the brutally aggressive Garth Drabinsky restored a derelict theater to house the musical Ragtime. Across the street, Disney returned to grandeur the New Amsterdam, eventually to house The Lion King. Riedel’s account of this show’s artists at work, particularly director Julie Taymor, is fascinating. Later, playwright Tony Kushner’s Angels in America became a landmark chronicle of the AIDS epidemic. Finally, Mel Brooks caps this vivid chronicle with his musical The Producers. Riedel, keenly knowledgeable of the business of show, rounds out his history covering the deals—and swindles—brought off by a colorful cast of producers.
An entertaining diversion for fans until the curtains rise again.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6663-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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