I'm always torn between being glad that Kushner is getting well-paid work and wanting Hollywood to go away so he can WRITE ANOTHER PLAY ALREADY.

It's been quite a while since I saw the show, but I remember being absolutely shocked by how awkward the lyrics were. Even by the standards of that era, it was pretty bad. Which is a shame, because parts of that show are really good, and it has the most raw emotion of any of the mega-musicals of the era.

I think that the year that had two new musicals (SUNSET BOULEVARD and SMOKEY JOE'S CAFE) and two revivals (SHOWBOAT and HOW TO SUCCEED) competing for all the prizes, was the strangest. Book and Score were just given to SUNSET, because it was the *only* eligible show, and SMOKEY JOE'S ended up being entirely shut out…

If SCHOOL OF ROCK ends up being a successful Broadway show, it will be the first one Andrew Lloyd Webber has had since the original PHANTOM. Kind of insane for someone who absolutely ruled commercial theatre for nearly 20 years.

The fact that he plays the song 100% serious makes all the difference. It's a genuinely terrific performance of the song that happens to be done by a man, as opposed to a one-joke "how funny that a man is singing this song" piece. (For example, Gavin Creel doing "As If We Never Said Goodbye" in the concert that the…

I haven't yet watched the Salonga video, but I have to jump in and say that the three boys singing "The Schuyler Sisters" made my former-effeminate-musical-theatre-loving-boy heart grow three sizes. It was a real "how far we've come" moment. Also, the one playing Angelica was amazing.

"Telekinetic Albino" is the best band name I've heard in months.

Difficult though she may be, I'm still pulling for her to get a shot at a comeback one of these days—she's a terrific actor, and she hasn't had much of interest to do in the past 30 years. She can't possibly be harder to deal with than Mickey Rourke, right?

My friend and I have long joked about how much we need a Labor Day themed horror movie, in which captains of industry are stalked by the ghost of the union leader they had killed. The tagline (a takeoff of the old union folk song): "If you saw Joe Hill last night, you won't see tomorrow".

I really hope it's a hit, so that Janelle Monáe can make the sci-fi cyborg feminist Afro-Futurist musical epic we all have been dreaming of.

Seeing her live is a quasi-religious experience. She's a force.

She actually trained as an actor—she graduated from AMDA in New York—and did a couple of shows before switching to music full time. So I've got high hopes.

It's a surprisingly common affliction.

I have to say, I'm skeptical about this. I feel like an author who never met a problem that couldn't be solved by an idealistic, middle-aged, white man isn't the best choice to tackle this particular novel. I wish the job had gone to someone who would be more likely to take a critical eye to the ways that the…

There's a version adapted by Christopher Sergel which has been done all over the US, and in London a few years ago with Robert Sean Leonard, but this will be the first time there has been a version on Broadway.

I love this song, and I said "aww" at Noel's story about it.

I mean, good for you, I guess?

"Lazy, but not downright loathsome."

It's hard to predict these things in advance, but I actually think the movie has decent potential to translate to the stage, and Guirgis is pretty much the best choice to do the adaptation—a LOT of his place tend to focus on working-class New Yorkers under stress.

I usually don't skip them, but I definitely tune them out a lot more.