Around Broadway

After a record-breaking number of preview performances, "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" has finally opened on Broadway. Jeff Spurgeon finds out if the show's long incubation improved the final product from Charles Isherwood of the New York Times.

The live broadcast of this year's Tony Awards begins this Sunday at 8pm on CBS, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris. Jeff Spurgeon speaks with Charles Isherwood, theater critic of The New York Times, to get his predictions on who will take home the top prizes.

The Punchdrunk Theater Company, known for producing offbeat adaptations, has taken on Shakespeare's Macbeth in their new play Sleep No More. Jeff Spurgeon gets the skinny on immersive experience from Charles Isherwood of The New York Times.

Two classic plays are in featured in new Off-Broadway productions. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood looks at how a new English adaptation of Moliere’s “The Misanthrope” at the Classic Stage Company called "The School for Lies" and a musical version of Shaw’s “Candida” at the Lincoln Center Theater called “A Minister’s Wife” stack up against the originals. 

The Tony Award nominations were announced yesterday in advance of the telecast of the awards ceremony on June 12th. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times joins Jeff Spurgeon to discuss the nominations: who was snubbed, who cleaned up, and what it all means for the success of the shows and the direction of future productions.

The Whoopi Goldberg movie Sister Act has been made into a new Broadway musical. Rossini's Le Comte Ory, now being performed at the Met Opera, features a group of men disguised as nuns. And nuns get spoofed in every imaginable fashion in Charles Busch's new comedy The Divine Sister. Does this trend represent a new sensibility for portraying religion on the great white way or is it merely a coincidence? Charles Isherwood of the New York Times joins Jeff Spurgeon in the studio to find out why so many are getting back in the habit. 

The British-born actor Mark Rylance has spent much of the current theater season in New York, recreating two acclaimed performances originally seen in London. Last fall, he starred in a revival of David Hirson’s period comedy La Bête at the Music Box Theater and this spring he is appearing at the same theater in a new play, Jerusalem, by Jez Butterworth. Reflecting on these two performances, Charles Isherwood wonders whether Mark Rylance might just be the best actor of his generation. 

Listen to the conversation to find the answer to our trivia question, then login in the top right corner and enter our contest before Wednesday night at midnight to win two tickets to see Jerusalem.

The question: For what play did Mark Rylance win the 2008 Tony Award?

In the first installment of our new show Around Broadway, Jeff Spurgeon discusses the new Broadway play “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” with The New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood. The show addresses the Iraq war and the more general repercussions of unleashing violence through the moral conscience of a tiger, played by Robin Williams. Listen to the conversation to find the answer to our trivia question, then login in the top right corner and enter our contest before Wednesday night at midnight to win two tickets to see the show.