Stark Sands

Swept Away

November 26, 2024

Besides the fact that many know the story of the Essex (later told in Melville’s "Moby Dick") or the Mignonette told in The Avett Brothers’ album of the same name, Logan has made his main characters totally generic without given names. We learn too little about each for them to be three-dimensional characters: the Mate, cynical and corrupt; the Captain, at the end of a long career, melancholy and philosophical; Big Brother, religious and judgmental, and Little Brother, innocent and curious. A knife is flashed soon after the survivors find themselves on the lifeboat and we know how that will end. Just like the voyage of the whaling ship, their time on the lifeboat is a waiting game: how long can they survive and who will be the first to go? [more]

& Juliet

November 30, 2022

The cast is a combination of New York stage favorites (Stark Sands, "Kinky Boots," and Betsy Wolfe, "Waitress," "Falsettos" and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"), new faces (Lorna Courtney, Ben Jackson Walker, Justin David Sullivan) and older veterans (opera baritone Paolo Szot and London stage star Melanie La Barrie making her Broadway debut.) The clever book is by writer David West Read previously seen in New York with "The Performers" and "The Dream of the Burning Boy" as well as the long running television series Schitt’s Creek. The show seems to have been influenced by "Something Rotten"(parody of Elizabethan times), "Six "(its updated 16th century costumes by Paloma Young), "Head Over Heels" (reboot of a classic tale wedded to a pop-rock score) and "Moulin Rouge" (the over-the-top staging by director Luke Sheppard and choreographer Jennifer Weber) – but is actually more fun than all of those shows. At times it resembles "Saturday Night Live" skits but knows enough to keep them short and not let any of them go on too long before introducing the next complication. [more]

The New York Pops 36th Birthday Gala: “Hat Full Of Stars: The Songs of Cyndi Lauper”

May 2, 2019

"Kinky Boots" ’ uplifting finale "Raise You Up/Just Be" was a euphoric highlight of The New York Pops’ marvelous tribute concert "Hat Full Of Stars: The Songs Of Cyndi Lauper. " The 2013 Tony Award winner for Best Score and Best Musical’s original cast member Stark Sands was joined by Lena Hall, Alex Newell, the Camp Broadway Kids ensemble and the renowned 78-piece orchestra. Earlier, that long-running Broadway show was represented by the limber and magnetic Mr. Sands’ dazzling "The Soul of a Man" and the "Glee" star Mr. Newell’s soulful "Hold Me in Your Heart." [more]

Nathan the Wise

April 14, 2016

It’s an uneasy stretch that ultimately fails to convincingly conflate the surprisingly liberal religious arguments that Lessing makes with the extraordinarily complex political/religious/cultural impasse in today’s Israel. The interactions between the Christian, Muslim and Jewish characters are frank, barbed and boldly modern sounding—at least in Kemp’s version—but come across more as statements of the class structure of eleventh century Jerusalem than deep-seated psychological or sociological issues. [more]