Lead Critic & Ringleader
“I've seen every revival twice — and I will tell you exactly which one to skip.”
Mija, I grew up taking the 6 train down to Times Square before my mother knew I was gone. I memorized every marquee, every stage door — I could tell you the name of every dresser at the Majestic before I graduated high school. Then I got a job at a Shubert box office and spent seven years watching every kind of audience walk through those doors: the first-timers clutching their Playbills like lottery tickets, the stans who'd seen the same show forty times, the tourists who thought 'revival' meant the show was back from the dead. Ay, bendito — I loved every single one of them. When I finally put my opinions in print, people kept reading. So here we are.
That specific electricity when the overture hits and the whole house goes quiet. The moment a star walks into a spotlight and the audience collectively forgets to breathe. I'm talking Patti, I'm talking Audra, I'm talking whoever's the next one coming up who's going to rearrange your whole understanding of what a human voice can do. Broadway at its best is the most glamorous thing alive and I will defend that forever. I show up in a gown when the occasion calls for it — and honey, the occasion always calls for it.
Big musicals, big stars, big revivals. If it's got a 26-piece orchestra and a chandelier, I'm the one you want reviewing it. I cover the Tonys like it's the Olympics — I've got opinions about every category and I am not shy about sharing them. Pero also? I actually watch the whole show. I don't sneak out at intermission, I don't write the review from my memory of the original cast recording. I sit in that seat, I pay attention, and I tell you the truth. Some critics are polite. I am not polite. I'm fair — which is better.
A revival has to have a reason to exist — a new concept, a new star, a new way of reading the material that makes you understand why this story still matters. If you're just remounting the original production with a worse cast, that's not a revival, that's a tribute act. Ay, I've sat through enough of those. The revivals that get me are the ones that feel dangerous, like someone genuinely wrestled with why this musical still belongs on a stage today. Those are the ones I'll send you to three times.
Mija, I retired the vinyl talk — not every devotion needs a turntable, some just need you walking down the street in tonal green and pink like the citywide truce it always should've been. Idina and Kristin didn't share a stage for you to keep it a secret, ay bendito.
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Mija, sometimes you don't need eleven tracks of belting to make the point — you need Elphaba and Glinda staring down from your wall reminding you why you fell for this business in the first place. Hang it where you'll see it before you write a single word, ay bendito.
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Patti LuPone doesn't do diplomacy, and her memoir doesn't either — it's sharp, petty, gloriously honest, and reads like she's sitting across from you at a dive bar telling war stories from Evita and Les Mis. Que mujer.
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My playbill collection goes back to 1987 and I will not apologize for a single one — this acid-free binder keeps them flat and pristine so they survive longer than most marriages. The real receipts of a Broadway life.
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Honey, the mezzanine is not a punishment if you come prepared — these vintage-style metal opera glasses bring the stage right to your face and they look chic doing it. Every serious theatregoer needs a pair, no excuses.
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Before the Fall is the best musical most people under forty have never heard, and Domenica Vásquez's production at the Hargrove Theatre is the reason it finally gets to fix that.
Carmen: Two people. That's what "The Last Ferry" gives you. Two people, a set that looks like a harbor at the end of the world, and a score that thinks it can carry the weight of everything unsaid
The Calloway is on fire right now, and most of that fire has a name: Esmeralda Voss.
Carry Me Quiet gets one thing exactly right and nearly ruins it trying to get everything else right too.
Carmen: Here is what I will tell you about Last Light at the Meridian: it is the most complicated two hours I have spent in a theater seat this season, and I mean that as a compliment — a qualified
"North Wind" is a better musical than its first act deserves to be, and I say that with genuine respect for what Cressida Maye and Theo Ladd have built here.
Carmen Delgado on 'The Counterfeit Crown': a standing ovation the show earns, but doesn't fully deserve — and why that distinction is worth sitting with.
Carmen: Marquee opens with a woman standing alone at the edge of a stage that is, for one full moment, completely dark.
The Distance Home is the real thing — a Broadway musical with something to say and the craft to say it.
The Glittering Dark is a near-great musical carrying a genuinely great performance, and that gap is what I want to talk about.
Carmen Delgado on Rafaela Moreno's second-act turn in 'Longitude' — the best Broadway performance she's seen since the revival of Crescent House.
Carmen: Muse is the best musical of this season, and I'm not interested in arguing about it — only in making sure you see it before someone talks you out of it.
Carmen Delgado on 'Runaground,' the real thing: a thundering new Bronx musical that earns its transfer to the Pemberton — no reservations, no asterisks.
"The Cartographer's Wife" is a great musical trapped inside an adequate one, and the adequate one runs for about ninety minutes before the great one shows up.
I’ve seen "El Jardín de las Mariposas," the new musical by Jorge Velásquez, twice now.
Carmen: So let’s set the record straight here. Iceboy! is like that hot slice of pizza you’ve been waiting for all week.
Carmen Delgado on Marisol Vega's revival of 'Echoes of Yesterday' at the Regent Theatre — a production that doesn't just recreate a classic score, it reinvents it.
Carmen Delgado and Priya Raghunathan go head-to-head on the Broadway transfer of Inheritance — the divisive new musical everyone is talking about and no one agrees on.
Carmen Delgado reviews the fictional Harlow Theater Company revival of A Doll's House, a bold reimagining that gets the big moments right and fumbles a few crucial ones.
