Bobby Steggert

ON THE PASSING OF THE NEW YORK MUSICAL FESTIVAL…

January 10, 2020

The festival has given birth to musicals that have gone on to Broadway ("Next to Normal," "Chaplin," "[title of show]," "In Transit") and Off-Broadway ("Altar Boyz," "The Other Josh Cohen," "My Vaudeville Man," "Yank!," "Cyclops," "Bedbugs," etc.) Its shows have been produced in all 50 states and in 27 countries.Productions launched at the festival have won one Pulitzer Prize, three Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, and seven Drama Desk Awards. That’s a terrific track record. [more]

Boy

March 15, 2016

In his widely produced 1977 play," The Elephant Man," Bernard Pomerance employed the theatrical device of having the grotesque John Merrick portrayed by an actor (invariably a handsome one) without makeup. "Boy" is similar in that the magnetic Bobby Steggert plays Samantha and later Adam without any external differentiation. Acclaimed for his New York City appearances in such musicals as "Yank" and the 2009 Broadway revival of "Ragtime," as well as the Terence McNally play "Mothers and Sons," Mr. Steggert here delivers a powerful performance. Low-key yet animated, he commandingly conveys all of the anguish and endurance of the character with heartbreaking effect. His characterization is particularly outstanding considering he alternates between being a child, an adolescent and an adult throughout the play. Each permutation is depicted with absolute focus. [more]

Ensemble for the Romantic Century: “The Sorrows of Young Werther”

June 15, 2015

Now in its fourteenth year, the remarkable Ensemble for the Romantic Century, founded by Eve Wolf, has been presenting musical programs of intellectual coherence and imagination, examining themes and subjects central to the development and character of the “long” nineteenth century, from the Enlightenment to the end of the Victorian Era. ERC's most recent production, The Sorrows of Young Werther, represents the best of this kind of production. Rich and subtle interdisciplinary critical and creative thinking informed the careful merging of a dramatic presentation of Goethe's novella, The Sorrows of Young Werther with Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe. The result was an evening of considerable artistic beauty and intellectual rewards. [more]

Mothers and Sons

March 22, 2014

Tyne Daly has made it a specialty playing unsympathetic and difficult women, for example her star turns as Mama Rose in Gypsy and Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s Master Class. Now in a new McNally play, Mothers and Sons, she plays the bitter, angry, taciturn Katherine Gerard, the Andre’s mother of McNally’s earlier one act. [more]