broadway -

In Broadway’s ‘Giant,’ Roald Dahl is a warped messenger for a vital debate about Israel

March 23, 2026March 23, 2026Jesse Orine

Roald Dahl is a terrible messenger for a serious conversation about Jews and Israel. Which is part of what makes “Giant,” the new Broadway play about the beloved children’s author’s 1983 antisemitic outbursts, so unsettling. The play asks urgent, complicated questions about Israel, Jewish solidarity and Diaspora responsibility — but it puts them in the […]

From ‘Hairspray’ to ‘South Park,’ composer Marc Shaiman tells a showbiz story shaped by Jewish humor

February 9, 2026February 9, 2026Jesse Orine

Marc Shaiman likes to joke that for half a century he’s been “the funny Jewish guy at the piano,” a role as old as vaudeville and as enduring as a well-timed joke. But behind the punchline is a career that traces a distinctly Jewish path through American show business: a bar mitzvah where he improvised […]

Ari’el Stachel, an ‘Arab Jewish’ actor with a Tony Award, has a message about antisemitism for Zohran Mamdani

July 10, 2025July 10, 2025Jesse Orine

STOCKBRIDGE, Massachusetts — At the climax of his one-man show, “Out of Character,” the actor Ari’el Stachel declares, “I am a Yemenite, Israeli, Ashkenazi, Jewish, American actor with anxiety.” It’s a complex identity that has brought him major attention since his Tony Award-winning turn as an Egyptian trumpeter in the hit 2018 musical “The Band’s […]