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Peter Marks

@petermarksdrama.bsky.social
2.4K followers 731 following 206 posts

Recovering journalist, 21 years as WaPo's theater critic, 9 years before that at NYT as reporter and critic. Now host of theater podcast, Marks & Vincentelli marksvincentelli.substack.com

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Reposted by Peter Marks
Elisabeth Vincentelli @evincentelli.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
In our latest episode, @petermarksdrama.bsky.social and I discussed his recent trip to a theater festival in Krakow, Tom Stoppard and some of our favorite shows of the year. marksvincentelli.substack.com/p/with-stopp...
marksvincentelli.substack.com
With Stoppard's passing, Peter and Elisabeth ask: Who are the canonical playwrights of our time?
We wish you a merry podcast with this gift of the two of us, talking about Tom Stoppard's legacy; our recent theatrical experiences and Elisabeth's giving shoutouts to some of her 2025 favorites.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
Attended Randy Rainbow’s show at Town Hall tonight. I needed that.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
The Pointless Triumph of a Hapless President www.nytimes.com/2025/07/04/o... “If Barry Goldwater was the book and Ronald Reagan the movie, Mr. Trump is the glitzy jukebox musical.” This is the kind of dumb, lazy analogy that “intellectuals” use to disparage theater.
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Pointless Triumph of a Hapless President
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
So, once and for all, is Hamlet a head case? Director/author Jeremy McCarter has decided to get inside Hamlet's head -- and get him inside yours, too -- to probe the question in a delicious new audio version of the play. Let us three tell you about it! marksvincentelli.substack.com/p/is-hamlet-...
marksvincentelli.substack.com
Is Hamlet a total head case? We talk to the director who has set a new audio version of the play in the Prince's mind.
Jeremy McCarter's Make-Believe Association asks you to put on headphones to fully experience "Hamlet."
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Reposted by Peter Marks
Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
It's worth doing if only to force a reaction from Vichy homosexual Ric Grenell.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
Early voting, Saturday 6/21. Lower Manhattan.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 15/06/2025
Staying at a house in Maine. Conservative Republican family next door. They’ve put up a Dump Trump sign.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Rockland, Maine! #NoKings
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
We talk Tonys - the proceedings were the best in memory. And ratings were up. (My first time in the audience. Elisabeth followed avidly from afar.) A discourse for our paying subscribers! open.substack.com/pub/marksvin...
open.substack.com
Peter was sitting in the hall. Elisabeth was sitting at her screen. Listen to their scintillating post-Tony Awards talk!
The 78th Tony Awards, broadcast on June 8, 2005, was by many accounts one of the best shows in years. How come? Peter and Elisabeth drill down.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
I was there. Best Tony Awards show in ages.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
How it looks in the hall!
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
What it looks like in the hall!
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
How it looks in the hall!
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
How it looks in the hall!
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
How it looks in the hall!
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
How it looks in the hall!
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
What do we see during commercial breaks? Set changes!
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
How the Buena Vista Social Club number looks in the hall.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Great opening number. In the room, goosebumps.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Could you feel Harvey Fierstein’s emotion at home? In the room it was electric.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Maybe Happy Ending score note: Darren Criss showed me the cramped little room adjacent to the Belasco Theatre stage, where the several string players sit. Several stories above them is located the conductor, whom they see on closed circuit TV.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
First standing O of the night goes to Edwin Robinson, the teacher teacher at Boys and Girls HS in Brooklyn. The voice!
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
In Radio City Music Hall, it feels like a Maybe Happy Ending night.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
I met Terry Moran when he was a reporter for Court TV. I was on the metro desk at the New York Times, and we were both covering the Woody-Mia custody trial in Manhattan in 1993. There is not a finer, more conscientious journalist.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
Make your day more joyful! Spend some time with us and Jonathan Groff, as we talk to the Tony-winning actor about life and Broadway and dancing as a kid in heels to the voice of Bobby Darin. AND SUBSCRIBE! marksvincentelli.substack.com/p/jonathan-g...
marksvincentelli.substack.com
There is no way not to have fun with Jonathan Groff. This episode of Marks & Vincentelli proves it.
Last year's Tony winner for best actor in a musical is up for the honor again this year, for "Just in Time." He could become the first back-to-back winner in the category, ever.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
As the critic and the Uber driver said to each other simultaneously: Would I steer you wrong? This is big. Our next guest on Marks & Vincentelli had a Broadway awakening. Audiences said: You'll be back. It all rolled along, merrily. So you won't want to miss this one, splish splashing down soon!
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
For anyone curious about how we do what we do, this episode--deconstructing a canny review by Elisabeth, about a Lincoln Center Theater play, Five Models in Ruins, 1981--is for you. How does one write considerately about a show that doesn't quite work? marksvincentelli.substack.com/p/special-gu...
marksvincentelli.substack.com
Special Guest Elisabeth Vincentelli on The Art of Writing a Less-Than-Positive Review
One of the most annoying canards out there is that critics relish writing pans.
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Reposted by Peter Marks
Burnside Gooch @burnsidegooch.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Carol Channing in Show Girl, the first Broadway show to be telecast live on April 2, 1961.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Marks & Vincentelli podcast is on a roll. Recent guests: Darren Criss and Helen J Shen, stars of Maybe Happy Ending, and then Jeffrey Seller, producer of Hamilton and Rent. NEXT UP: Kimberly Belflower, author of John Proctor is the Villain, the play that has garnered the most Tony nods. Drops soon!
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
I applaud the Les Miz cast members who won’t sing for that schmuck. www.cnn.com/2025/05/07/p...
cnn.com
Exclusive: Some ‘Les Mis’ cast members plan to boycott Trump’s attendance at Kennedy Center performance next month | CNN Politics
When President Donald Trump descends on the Kennedy Performing Arts Center next month for a high-dollar fundraiser and a performance of “Les Misérables,” he won’t be seeing the usual cast performing, ...
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
The "Maybe Happy Ending" stars, Darren Criss and Helen J Shen, joined us on Marks & Vincentelli just before the musical scored 10 Tony nominations. Listen as they talk about the journey in creating this boy bot meets girl bot love story. marksvincentelli.substack.com/p/listen-as-...
marksvincentelli.substack.com
Listen as "Maybe Happy Ending" stars Darren Criss and Helen J Shen discuss their melodic musical about robots, fireflies and love on a hard drive.
Under Michael Arden's direction, the show has developed a devoted following at Broadway's Belasco Theatre.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Ich bin ein Kanadisch!
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
🤣🤣🤣
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Yup, says it all.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Next up on the Marks & Vincentelli podcast: the extraordinary Kate Valk of the Wooster Group, the revered mainstay of experimental theater. Episode drops soon and in the meantime, read this splendid piece about the Woosters by Ben Brantley: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/t...
nytimes.com
At 50, the Wooster Group Is Experimenting on Itself
Elizabeth LeCompte and Kate Valk reflect on their decades of making daring theater together. Just don’t call it a nostalgic exercise.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Where were you when the lights went out … on your savings?
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Cory Booker has been speaking for 2 1/2 Mahabharatas.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
NYC
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Sometimes, you do leave a theater humming the scenery -- and maybe because the set was designed by David Rockwell. Here the Tony winner (for his stunning jewelbox set for a revival of "She Loves Me") talks about his work for Broadway and beyond. marksvincentelli.substack.com/p/ready-set-...
marksvincentelli.substack.com
Ready, set (design), go! David Rockwell, scenery maestro, talks about Boop! and Pirates! and the ephemeral nature of sets
The Tony-winning designer has a thriving studio that designs not only theater pieces ("Hairspray") but also hotels (The Civilian) and restaurants (Union Square Cafe)
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Lincoln had a Team of Rivals. What we have now is a Confederacy of Dunces.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Brilliant article by Jason Zinoman. A gift version here: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/a...
nytimes.com
Lionizing Mark Twain, Conan O’Brien Subtly Skewers Trump (Gift Article)
In accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the comedian mounted a bristling political attack artfully disguised as a tribute.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
It’s Conan O’Brien’s big night — at Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center wapo.st/4iHOwgv
wapo.st
It’s Conan O’Brien’s big night — at Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center
At this year’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony honoring Conan O’Brien, a tribute to comedy may compete with the drama in the building.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
My hobbies? I enjoy reading, skiing and watching the price of Tesla stock drop.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
This subway door on this downtown 1 train opened while train was approaching 14th Street. Woman almost fell out.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
A Democrat being thanked by trump is the definition of the kiss of death.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
“On Thursday night, the Kennedy Center concert hall was awash in nearly a minute of howling, passionate booing…The cause of the … audible outrage was the emergence onto the box tier of Vice President JD Vance…” www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...
washingtonpost.com
Review | A warm send-off to the NSO starts with a frigid welcome to JD Vance
A program featuring violinist Leonidas Kavakos was disrupted by long lines and security checks to accommodate the vice president’s visit.
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Peter Marks @petermarksdrama.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Adam Lambert is playing the Emcee in "Cabaret" on Broadway, and how the audience responds is a kind of rorschach test for attitudes today about tolerance and antisemitism. Listen to this fascinating discussion of his career and his performance. marksvincentelli.substack.com/p/from-idol-...
marksvincentelli.substack.com
From Idol to Emcee: Adam Lambert talks about what's funny — and what's definitely not — in "Cabaret."
The versatile "American Idol" runner-up has made his Broadway debut in a storied part. He reveals what the wild ride in this revival has been like.
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