In 1957, 'West Side Story' had introduced the musical to the reckless dark side of teen-age life; 'Bye Bye Birdie,' set in Sweet Apple, Ohio, where the citizens apparently dress mostly in chartreuse, mauve, orange, periwinkle, and turquoise, was a… — John Lahr Copy Share Image
Like the tail fins on fifties American cars or the parabolic shapes of Populuxe furniture, 'West Side Story' incarnates the dream of momentum in the golden age of the twentieth century. — John Lahr Copy Share Image
The British playwright Nina Raine is one of her generation's most promising talents. — John Lahr Copy Share Image
Broadway shows in New York draw two times the attendance of all New York sports teams put together. — John Lahr Copy Share Image
The pigeons are shitting on George M. Cohan. I shoo them off. They fly up and perch on his hat. Cohan would've never given… — John Lahr Copy Share Image
I go to the theatre expecting to have a good time. I want each play and performance to take me somewhere. Naturally, this doesn't… — John Lahr Copy Share Image
Dame Edna is that rarest sighting in our time of the absolute comic, an inspired personification of caprice whose comedy answered the primal call… — John Lahr Copy Share Image
We were postwar middle-class white kids living in the slipstream of the greatest per-capita rise in income in the history of Western civilization; we… — John Lahr Copy Share Image
Momentum was part of the exhilaration and the exhaustion of the twentieth century which Coward decoded for the British but borrowed wholesale from the… — John Lahr Copy Share Image
Death of a Salesman' is a brilliant taxonomy of the spiritual atrophy of mid-twentieth-century white America. — John Lahr Copy Share Image
I detest literature. I abominate the theatre. I have a horror of culture. I am only interested in magic! — John Lahr Copy Share Image
In 1957, 'West Side Story' had introduced the musical to the reckless dark side of teen-age life; 'Bye Bye Birdie,' set in Sweet Apple,… — John Lahr Copy Share Image
The New Yorker's' drama critics have always had a comparable authority because, for the most part, the magazine made it a practice to employ… — John Lahr Copy Share Image
I know in an existential sense that life can change on a dime ... something has instantly and inexorably changed in American life. — John Lahr Copy Share Image
Writers don't always know what they mean - that's why they write. Their work stands in for them. On the page, the reader meets… — John Lahr Copy Share Image
Tony Awards boost Broadway attendance and sell the shows on the road. They're the sugar to swat the fly. If you needed more explanation… — John Lahr Copy Share Image
