Marks & Vincentelli: A Theatre Podcast

Our guest today is a powerbroker. No, really. As a casting director, Bernard (Bernie to most people) Telsey wields considerable power — and he tries to use it for good, not evil. Telsey’s breakthrough came when he helped put together the original cast of “Rent,” back in the mid-1990s. Since then he’s worked on a gazillion shows on Broadway, Off and around the country, as well as on movies and TV —...

In this episode we discussed pretty somber stuff with Betsy Aidem, who plays the central role of Marcelle in Josh Harmon’s “Prayer for the French Republic” on Broadway. She was also in the 2022 Off Broadway run at Manhattan Theater Club, and in between those runs Aidem appeared in Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt.” If you think you discern a thread between these two shows, you’re right. In this episod...

It’s been a minute and we apologize but all good things, right? As you may have heard, there has been a big change in Peter’s life — as in, he took a buyout and is now longer with the Washington Post. Watch out for Free Agent Peter Marks! The good news is that we are sticking with this podcast. Now that we are back on track, here is, at last, our interview with David Adjmi. We’ve long admired his...

As listeners of this podcast (and anybody with half a brain) know, comedy is hard, which makes the success of Selina Fillinger’s play “POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great D*****s Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive” even more notable. Recounting a particularly bad day in the administration of a philandering President, the play centers on the women activating behind the scenes to prop him up. “POTUS...

Another great get for the podcast: the playwright and actress Jocelyn Bioh. She talked to us about her breakthrough as a writer, “School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play” (2017), and how it has become one of the most produced plays in the United States during the 2019-20 season , and of course she also discussed her Broadway debut, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” which is currently in previe...

There’s a lot of alarmist talk about theater making the rounds and we’re not cockeyed optimists, we get it: Things are really rough out. Peter wrote a big article about it, and it’s titled “Theater Is in Freefall, and the Pandemic Isn’t the Only Thing to Blame.” But there are also lots of initiatives that give us hope. After Colorado’s Creede Rep on our previous episode, we head over to the Badger...

There are just about 400 people living year-round in Creede, Colo., and yet that town has been sustaining a theater company since 1966. How the heck did that happen, and how does it keep going? Elisabeth first went to Creede in 2021, and wrote about Creede Repertory Theater for The New York Times . She loved the experience so much that she went back to Creede on vacation the following year (and wr...

This week we are proud to have David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori as our guests. Their show Kimberly Akimbo has just won five Tony Awards: Best Musical, Best Score (Jeanine wrote the music, David the lyrics), Best Book (by David, based on his own play from 2000), Leading Actress in a Musical (Victoria Clark) and Featured Actress in a Musical (Bonnie Milligan). This isn’t this dynamic duo’s fi...

He’s a “Succession” regular on HBO and now, on Broadway, he’s newly Tony-nominated, for his performance opposite Jessica Chastain in the hit revival of “A Doll’s House.” Arian Moayed is the guest on the latest Marks & Vincentelli. While Elisabeth was away on assignment, Peter went solo with Arian for an illuminating conversation about Arian’s modern approach to Ibsen’s portrait of an 18th Century...

In February, a production of Lorraine Hansberry’s play “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, starring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan. The same production, directed by Anne Kauffman, is now about to reopen on Broadway , where it’ll run until July 2. We used this opportunity to invite the director of the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust , Joi Gresham, to...

What a way to premiere our new interview series, in which we will pair a director and an actor! Parker Posey is wonderful in as the theater star Irene in “The Seagull/Woodstock, NY” — Thomas Bradshaw’s adaptation of the Chekhov play, transposed to the Catskills. (In the original, Irene is, of course, Irina Arkadina.) Posey is too rare a presence on New York stages, where her last appearance was al...

This week’s guest is Priscilla Gilman, who dropped by the podcast to talk about her new memoir, “The Critic’s Daughter” (Norton) — the critic in question being her father, Richard Gilman. He was a staff theater critic at Newsweek, back when weekly magazines had such a position on payroll, but arguably became even more influential when he began teaching at the Yale School of Drama. Priscilla talked...

Fasten your seatbelts: There’s never a dull moment when Stephen Adly Guirgis is behind the mic! We both loved Stephen’s latest play, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Between Riverside and Crazy.” The show is running at the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway until Feb. 19. It’s also available as a simulcast until Feb. 12, which is fantastic news for our listeners around the country. He was remarkably candi...

We always love when Dr. Blythe Adamson, of Infectious Economics , drops by the show: She’s basically been holding (virtually, of course) us by the hand since theater came back in New York. As seems to be the case every winter now — remember the lines around the block last December when everybody was trying to get tested for Omicron? — we are reading about a new variant. (This one has been nickname...

It’s like clockwork: Every January, some Broadway shows close. This year is no different as we say goodbye to “A Strange Loop,” “The Music Man,” “Ohio State Murders,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Beetlejuice.” But what got a lot of attention were a couple of shows, “Ain’t No Mo’ ” and “KPOP,” that closed in December after very short runs. For whatever reasons, they didn’t find an...

In the past decade, Danielle Brooks has emerged as one of our favorite actors. Whether it’s in Shakespeare (“Much Ado About Nothing” at the Delacorte), a popular musical ( “The Color Purple” ) or an August Wilson drama (she’s currently starring in the Broadway revival of “The Piano Lesson” alongside Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington), Danielle always stands out. And of course there was h...

This week our guest is Dr. Susan C. W. Abbotson , who teaches at Rhode Island College and is such an Arthur Miller specialist that she once was president of the Arthur Miller Society. She’s still on that organization’s board and also serves as performance editor of the “Arthur Miller Journal.” Let’s go on a limb and say that she knows a thing or two about this most prominent — and still incredibly...

The first time Elisabeth saw Stephanie J. Block was in “The Pirate Queen,” back in 2007, and she loved every second of it. (Do fans of this show have a name? Queenies? Whatever, Elisabeth is one of them.) Since then she has seen Stephanie in “9 to 5,” “Anything Goes,” “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark,” Little Miss Sunshine,” “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” “Falsettos,” “The Cher Show” (twice). That’s a...

Sets: Sometimes, they get their own entrance applause — but does it mean they are, you know, good ? This week we talked about what makes a set work with the designer Beowulf Boritt , whose new book is “Transforming Space Over Time: Set Design and Visual Storytelling with Broadway’s Legendary Directors.” Beowulf has worked at all the biggest regional houses and his first Broadway show was “The 25th...

Our guest for this episode is Ben Brantley , who retired in October 2020 after 27 years (most of them as chief critic) as a daily theater reviewer at The New York Times. That’s a lot of years and a lot of reviews — more than 2,500 of them. Ben is an effusive man with a quick wit and a memory like a steel trap. That’s a combination that makes for a great podcast guest. But don’t take our word for i...

Once Peter recovered from learning that Kate Shindle’s apartment in Queens has a garage, he was able to fully participate in the conversation with our guest, the president of Actors’ Equity and an actor herself (perhaps you saw her in the “Fun Home” tour company, among other shows). Founded in 1913, Actors’ Equity represents more than 51,000 theater actors and stage managers. Obviously, this means...

One of our most popular guests has been Dr. Blythe Adamson , whose company, Infectious Economics , develops covid-19 safety protocols for Broadway theaters, among other venues, including sports arenas. With masking eliminated in July as a mandate on Broadway, we wanted to have Dr. Adamson back to talk about what the change means for theater artists and theatergoers. Dr. Adamson’s take on the decis...

Welcome to the “____ & Vincentelli” edition of “Marks & Vincentelli”! Peter was stuck with deadlines so I, Elisabeth, was alone at the wheel. Warning: I got so drunk on power that my accent was completely out of control. Luckily I had a great guest to keep me on track: Lauren Halvorsen, who writes the theater newsletter “Nothing for the Group” on this very platform. Every week “Nothing for the Gro...

This week we talked with Nataki Garrett, artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore. — one of the finest companies in the country. She was appointed artistic director in August 2019 and was scheduled to start in April 2020. As you can imagine, the timing was less than ideal , which is why Nataki’s first full in-person season is only underway now. We had a fruitful talk th...

Since opening at Playwrights Horizons in 2019, the musical “A Strange Loop” has earned largely enthusiastic reviews, the Pulitzer Prize and, in its current Broadway incarnation, 11 Tony nominations. It was a pleasure to welcome the show’s creator, Michael R. Jackson, on the show. As you can well imagine, he is a man of many thoughts and opinions. Here is Peter’s review of the Woolly Mammoth produc...