Give My Regards to Broadway (On and Off) in 2019

2019 is shaping up to be a big year in NYC theater. After the ball drops and the champagne bottles pop, the stages of this city will be the real New Year's party. 

On and off Broadway, we'll see the likes of Glenda Jackson (again), Annette Bening, Hugh Jackman, Adam Driver, Jake Gyllenthal, Daveed Diggs, Alan Cumming, Isabelle Huppert, Kelli O'Hara -- even John Larroquette! -- and so many more in a variety new plays and musicals and revivals. 

I already have tickets for Glenda Jackson's King Lear in March and cannot wait! Needless to say, a review will follow on this blog, so stay tuned. 

I love movies, including many old ones, but there's nothing like seeing great live theater. The emotional impact of brilliant dramaturgy is searing. This is especially the case when it comes to seeing legendary actors on stage -- unlike movies, where you can see the likes of Gary Cooper or Spender Tracey or Katherine Hepburn giving classic performances decades after their deaths -- you can only see, say Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, on stage only a few times in a lifetime. Great actors, like all human beings, won't live forever and, one day, you won't be able to see them on stage ever again. (My mom once saw Vivian Leigh on stage!).

That's why I was touched to read this obituary of a Japanese-American dancer who was in the original Broadway version of On the Town -- during WWII no less. She lived an amazing, trailblazing life, ending at the age of 99. Her life, her story, have an "only in America" theme -- and it's a reminder that great talents' appearances on the stage are fleeting, and should be appreciated when they are.