FROZEN BORSCHT SALON

PHOTO: Director Bartlett Sher (and me) at Joe Allen Restaurant in Manhattan Many years ago, while filling salt and pepper shakers after a busy graveyard shift in a corporate-owned fun-themer restaurant near the college I was attending, I was having one of those show business chats with a budding actor standing next to me filling…

GROTOWSKI DOES PHOENIX “Be a clown, be a clown, all the world loves a clown. Be a crazy buffoon and the ‘demoiselles ‘ll all swoon. Dress in huge baggy pants and you’ll ride the road to romance. A butcher or a baker, ladies never embrace. A barber for a beau would be a social disgrace….

Arthur Miller uses the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 as a metaphor for McCarthyism in his play, The Crucible, now in limited run here in New York featuring a cast of British, Irish and American actors in a reimagined version by Belgian director, Ivo van Hove. I saw the play Wednesday night. Today, some feel…

(Photo: Biography from “Fiddler” Program – May 1981) My friend, Hal Grant, called me today and said, “Nehemiah Persoff passed away, he was 102.” And then Hal went back to work directing a television show in Southern California. Nehemiah used to talk about ‘The Actors Studio’, and his teachers Stella Adler and Elia Kazan. And…

THE WILL OF GRACE – May 6, 2023 First of all, The Belasco is stunning, an homage to the days when people dressed up to go to the theater, when an orchestra seat to a Broadway show was a dollar, which was expensive when you consider that in those days a struggling actor like me…