In the words of the Joker, "I may be a criminal psychopath, but at least I'm an AMERICAN criminal psychopath!"

Yet. That's the next ride upgrade.

Yeah. It reminds me of what always rubbed me the wrong way about Chris Colfer: I work in the theatre, I write for the theatre. I have no problem with gay people. But I don't like people with that smug, insufferable air of precious superiority that Colfer (and honesty, Chabon himself and maybe Chabon Jr.) so often…

Nah, he's the Riddler. Nerdy, awkward little guy who often rhymes compulsively and just wants to be respected by much cooler, much more established figures? That's totally Miranda's wheelhouse- both in real life and the character he played on "HOUSE."

Everyone knows Trump's original family name was Drumpf, but did you know he's a McDuck on his mother's side?

To say it's way way better than Sondheim may be a stretch. Possibly impossible. But yes, it lives up to the hype.

As my friend Kay said to me two days ago, upon finally watching BoJack Horseman, "I hate that this stupid show is one of my favorite things ever, and damn you for making me love it."

Few, and very few of those are the socioeconomic group (poor and disenfranchised people of color let down by the political system and the education system) "Hamilton" was ostensibly created to inspire.

The double-disc complete release of the soundtrack as part of the Legacy Collection is masterful. It's never sounded better, and the score cuts are finally presented in their complete form- the movie's finale, after Simba Jr. is baptized and the chorus goes "circle of… LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE! (boom)" has a brief, jubilant…

The movie is based on a more literalized, less metaphorical conflict between to be or not to be. Most people interpret "to be or not to be" at face value- "to live, or to kill myself," but the conflict Hamlet is actually mulling is taking an active versus a passive stance.
Simba, who is less suicidal in general than…

Maybe they'll get Patrick Warbuton in to play Quint the Great from the Timon and Pumbaa series.

Jooseph Smit! American Mo-ses!

Eh, they did the first five minutes of a successful stage musical just fine, and then the quality falls off STEEPLY.

Maybe I'm an old fogey at 26, but this feels like "too much too soon" in a way that the remake of "Beauty and the Beast" does not. Maybe it's because "Lion King" was an original piece that riffed on "Hamlet" rather than a classic public domain tale; maybe it's because unlike the other Disney Renaissance films, "The…

I think those came about because of a weird rights-negotiation issue where the Archie characters briefly became up for grabs.

Sheeeeit.

As someone who's written for the stage a lot, and written for Off-Broadway recently, I get what you mean. What works in the context of a show experience, or even in listening to a whole album back to back for a show's cast recording, rarely if ever works in terms of a single casual listen. In the theatre world, we…

Dodd sings lead on about half of "Bad for Good," but he only sings on the "generic songs." Anything with a character, Steinman did for himself.

Jim Steinman has been working on his magnum opus, an apocalyptic darkly comic rock opera about the end of the world and vaguely sexualized Peter Pan themes, since the Sixties. The most successful version fused this concept with "Fearless Vampire Killers" by Roman Polanski, becoming the European musical "Tanz der…

Steinman is a weird dude. Sincere as he can be, he's also got stuff about serial murder on just about every album he did, and more than once a person has sex with a guitar or a motorcycle.