Columnists: Michael Riedel

Michael Riedel

Michael Riedel has covered Broadway for 20 years, 10 of them for The New York Post. He is also the co-host of "Theater Talk" on PBS and CUNY-TV. He graduated from Columbia University with a BA in history.

Latest Columns

• ‘Chocolate’ needs more bite

  Hold your breath. Make a wish. Now count to three. Come with me, and you’ll be at the first preview of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”! I have a spy who went under cover as an Oompa Loompa Wednesday night at this...   May 24, 2013

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• More Tony madness, including a ‘Matilda’ backlash

  Tony madness continues to sweep through Shubert Alley.  The races are tightening. The campaigns are in full swing. Rivals are quietly trying to do in one another. Everyone’s tense. Everyone’s vulnerable. Which means...   May 22, 2013

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• Why 'Virginia Woolf' is in Tonys trouble

  Broadway is in the grip of Tony fever — which means everybody’s behaving as if they were in that great Alexander Payne movie “Election.” This year, the role of Tracy Flick is being played by Jeffrey Richards, the...   May 17, 2013

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• Sting’s Broadway-bound musical gets a reading

  Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, have become fixtures on the Broadway red carpet, attending the openings of “Lucky Guy,” “Motown” and “I’ll Eat You Last.” What’s the old pop icon doing around the Great White Way? Why,...   May 15, 2013

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• ‘Beautiful: The Carole King Musical’ to kick off fall season

  With the Tony nominations out, and the big winners predictable — “Matilda,” “Pippin,” “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” — Broadway’s busy putting together the new slate of shows...   May 10, 2013

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• Scott Rudin takes a poke at a Times writer through an ad

  Jon Wilner, the former Broadway advertising executive, liked to say that you can slip anything into The New York Times — if you know how to massage the system. Producer Scott Rudin certainly “massaged the system”...   May 08, 2013

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• Equity angered by Tonys special award

  What would the Tonys be without a little controversy — a little tempest in tap shoes? And I don’t mean the fact that the infantile “Bring It On” was nominated as Best Musical. No, this little brouhaha pits Actors’...   May 03, 2013

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• Why the Tonys snubbed Bette Midler

  Last week in this column, I wondered whether Bette Midler would win a Tony for her delicious comic turn as Hollywood superagent Sue Mengers. But as one of my readers — Chris Galka — thoughtfully pointed out yesterday in...   May 01, 2013

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• Can Bette Midler win the Tony?

  Can the “Divine Miss M” win a “Divine Miss T?” That is, can Bette Midler win a Tony Award (which is named after Antoinette Perry)? Midler returns to Broadway tonight for the first time in nearly 35 years in “I’ll Eat...   April 24, 2013

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• ‘Mamma Mia!’ is heading to a smaller theater

  ‘mamma Mia!” is on the move. After 12 years and 5,000 performances, “Mamma Mia!” is decamping from the Winter Garden to the Broadhurst in the fall. The move is a tacit acknowledgment that the show is beginning to show...   April 19, 2013

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• ‘Matilda’ will take a gleeful, skipping waltz to the Tonys

  ‘A night off, a night off, my house seats for a night off!” is the refrain heard round Shubert Alley as openings come fast and furious before the Tony deadline. But just when you thought you couldn’t take another...   April 17, 2013

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• ‘Motown' is rocking the box office to the tune of $16 million advance

  I’ve been a little sniff-sniffy about “Motown, the Musical,” which opens Sunday at the Lunt-Fontanne. Its script, by Motown mogul Berry Gordy (with an assist from Dick Scanlan), isn’t exactly “Jersey Boys” — or, for...   April 12, 2013

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• The Iron Lady & the lively arts

  Margaret Thatcher was, like her good friend Ronald Reagan, a politician with theatrical flair. She gave one of the best performances I’ve ever seen — in the House of Commons right before she resigned as prime minister....   April 10, 2013

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• Bond and his babe coming to Broadway in ‘Betrayal’

  Bond is coming back to Broadway, this time with his better half.  And I don’t mean Blofeld! Daniel Craig, the reigning 007, will star opposite his wife, Rachel Weisz, in a revival of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” starting...   April 05, 2013

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• Remembering Richard Griffiths, an actor from the old school

  Richard Griffiths was an actor from the old school. And by that I mean he liked a little nip before going onstage. I met him a couple of times at Angus McIndoe’s, a bar across the street from the Broadhurst, the theater...   April 03, 2013

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• Trey Anastasio’s ‘Hands on a Hardbody’ about to close?

  Broadway is about to be gripped by spring fever, with 15 openings scheduled between now and the cutoff date for Tony Award nominations at the end of April. Shia LaBeouf’s “Orphans” meltdown notwithstanding, the gossip...   March 29, 2013

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• How 'Matilda' waltzed into town

  Thirteen years after his death, Roald Dahl is enjoying a theatrical comeback. In London, the “Hairspray” team of MarcShaiman and Scott Wittman areworking on “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” The $10 million Sam...   March 27, 2013

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• Little orphan box office for ‘Annie’

  I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for “Annie.”  It was my very first Broadway show, and I saw it from the last row of the balcony of the Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon). And though it was a long time ago — I...   March 27, 2013

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• Behind the scenes at ‘Kinky Boots’ with Harvey Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper

  Christine Quinn may be the Democratic front-runner for mayor, but there’s one patch of New York where she’d face some formidable competition: Broadway, an area that would handily be won by Harvey Fierstein. He can’t...   March 15, 2013

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• ‘Motown,’ now in previews, still working on its lines

  As loyal readers of this column know — hi, Mom! hi, Dad! — I’ve taken to dispensing advice about how to improve the new crop of Broadway shows. And the results, I must say, have been pretty darn impressive. I told my...   March 13, 2013

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• Will Tony present a glass slipper?

  We’re on the cusp of what’s shaping up to be a busy spring on Broadway — 19 productions are on the way — and producers are already playing the Tony sweepstakes. As they survey the competition, producers and their...   March 08, 2013

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• Gloria Estefan’s life coming to Broadway

  * A few quick hits today:  THE Nederlanders recently announced that they’ve teamed up with Gloria Estefan and her husband, Emilio, to bring the couple’s life story to Broadway. The Estefans raised themselves up from...   March 06, 2013

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• Feinstein may go Below for his new nightclub

  Ever since Feinstein’s shut down at the Regency, Michael Feinstein has been on the hunt for a new place to tickle his ivories. I hear he may make a bid on 54 Below, that fine new cabaret and restaurant in the basement...   March 01, 2013

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• Cop-shop mystery

  Former New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton will make his Broadway debut in “Lucky Guy,” the new Nora Ephron play about newspaper columnist Mike McAlary, starring Tom Hanks. The city’s top cop will appear — on...   February 27, 2013

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• ‘Orphans’ has no beef with Alec

  And the Jeremy Piven Award for Best Meltdown by a Performer Who Will Never Work Again on Broadway goes to . . . Shia LaBeouf, who was fired this week from “Orphans.” LaBeouf has been tweeting up a storm about his abrupt...   February 22, 2013

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• Queen for a play

  One of my favorite plays of the past 10 years is “Frost/Nixon,” Peter Morgan’s riveting historical drama about the clash between the disgraced Richard Nixon and the British television personality David Frost. The play...   February 20, 2013

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• B’way: starlight starblight

  Maybe she should sing. Tickets went on sale last week for “I’ll Eat You Last,” a one-woman play starring Bette Midler, but there were no fireworks at the box office. Backers were confident that the sale, offered...   February 15, 2013

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• Simon’s falling in love with ‘X Factor’ musical

  What better song for Simon Cowell to sing than “Falling in Love With Myself”? That’s the big second-act number in “The X Factor Musical,” which had an invitation-only workshop two weeks ago at London’s Soho Theatre....   February 13, 2013

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• Script woes might trip up 'Motown: The Musical'

  ‘Motown: The Musical” was loading into the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre yesterday, but there was one thing I couldn’t find amid the trucks, trolleys and crates: a script. The $12 million musical has been in rehearsal for weeks...   February 06, 2013

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• Would-be ‘Rebecca’ angel investor unmasked in Florida

  In the matter of “Rebecca: The Broadway Scandal,” we learned this week that it was the press agent — Marc Thibodeau — who sent the poison-pen e-mail to an “angel investor” about to pony up $2.25 million to save the show...   February 01, 2013

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