THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE

Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman

Open: 23.05.2018 - Off-Broadway

Photos by Carol Rosegg and Sara Krulwich

"STUNNING, IMAGINATIVE, AND LYRICAL! 

Stroman’s eloquent choreography speaks volumes without saying a word. All the dancers display the inventive wit, emotive force, and unsurpassed beauty that characterize the show. Stroman offers an exquisite synthesis of drama, dance, and music. It all adds up to one enthralling experience in the theater."

- Deb Miller, DC Metro Theater Arts  

"THE DANCES ARE WONDERFUL!

Stroman’s choreography is balletic and elegant. Kander’s music is equally tender. The cast is excellent."

- Jesse Oxfeld, New York Stage Review  

"Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman, who always exudes great finesse in allowing storytelling to blend from spoken word to musical interpretations, the 100-minute one-act is beautifully touching and bittersweet."

- Michael dale, Broadway World

DOT

Directed by Susan Stroman

Open: 23.02.2016 - Off-Broadway
Photos by Sara Krulwich & Carol Rosegg

"But Ms. Stroman’s streamlined direction, which sometimes has the snappy rhythms of musical comedy (there is even a brief dance break), keeps the play from tilting too far toward the soap operatic, or for that matter the sitcomic. The rapprochement between Donnie and Adam in the second act runs a tad long and approaches the treacly, but when the focus is on Dotty and her family’s reckoning with her disease, the play is on firm footing, and consistently generates laughter." 

in The New York Times by Charles Isherwood

"Encompassing themes of sexuality, family and race — "I'm a black man in America, I own trauma," Donnie exclaims at one point — the play is too wildly uneven to have much of an impact. Director Susan Stroman (The Producers, Crazy for You, The Scottsboro Boys) does little to help, her over-emphatic staging reflective of the musicals that are more in her wheelhouse." 

in The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck 

"Stroman — who directed Domingo in “The Scottsboro Boys,” which also began at the Vineyard — helms with a bright broadness that punches the laughs but sometimes brings the work to a sitcom level. Only when the production takes a breather from the fraught storylines does the play find its focus, and its heart.A scene between Fidel and Dotty, where the mother confides her fears, is presented simply and truthfully. And a moment where an old song gives Dotty a wondrous sense of escape — when Adam lovingly steps in as her imagined dead husband and we glimpse Dotty in her younger glory — is exquisite, tapping into Stroman’s musical staging gifts." 

in Variety by Frank Rizzo

"Susan Stroman is an ideal director for the piece as a whole, bringing her Tony-winning eye for musicality to a play that really needs to sing and dance, and she's helped the actors pitch their performances perfectly." in Talkin' Broadway by Matthew Murray

PRINCE OF BROADWAY

Co-Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman

Open: 23.10.2015 - Tokyu Theatre Orb in Tokyuo, Japan

Photos by Beowulf Boritt and Ryoji Fukuoka

Broadway opening: 24.08.2017

OTHER WORKS

FOR THE LOVE OF DUKE - in 1999 Stroman created "Blossom Got Kissed" for New York City Ballet in 1999, featuring the music of Duke Ellington, to celebrate the company’s 50th Anniversary season. She later revisited the piece, choreographing three additional short dances to be performed alongside the original. This new expanded ballet entitled FOR THE LOVE OF DUKE premiered in May 2011.

Photos by Paul Kolnik

TAKE FIVE OR MORE OR LESS - in 2008 Stroman created this peace for The Pacific Northwest Ballet, for it she combined jazz music by Dave Brubeck and classical pointe work.

Photos by Angela Sterling

To see videos of this production go to “The Moving Picture Show”

THE LAST TWO PEOPLE ON EARTH

Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman
Open: 16.05.2015 - American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, Mass
Photos by Gretjen Helene and unknown

"The show begins with creaky vaudeville routines: Musical hat-and-cane sequences and comic bits that would feel right at home in a silent comedy. But as the production moves on, their relationship deepens and soon finds its heart and humanity, beginning with Patti Griffin’s “Making Pies” and Randy Newman’s “Snow.”.. Stroman works in miniature here, giving each man small gestures, movements and moments that land beautifully. But she also allows for some well-placed and playful stage turns, too.”

in Variety by Frank Rizzo

“The director and choreographer putting these two through their strange paces is Susan Stroman, whose work on Broadway (including “The Producers”) mostly falls within musical theater tradition. Stretching in new directions is a necessity for artists of any age or caliber, and all three deserve a round of hearty applause for concocting (with Paul Ford, the music director) this odd and often exhilarating show, which feels like a Beckett play — specifically “Waiting for Godot” — with the gnomic words replaced by more than two dozen tunes from the (mostly) American pop and Broadway songbooks."

in The New York Times by Charles Isherwood

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY

Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman
Open: 10.04.2014 - Broadway
Photos by Paul Kolnik and Sara Krulwich

To see videos of this production go to “The Moving Picture Show”

"There is, however, plenty to enjoy-director-choreographer Susan Stroman at the top of her game with a toothsome cast and a gag-filled book surrounded by repurposed jazz standards. The show might be lightweight and nostalgic, but you can't deny its savvy craft and bursting showmanship: sexy chorines, Art Deco backdrops and sight gags galore. Who knew Broadway could still be this much fun?" 
in Time Out New York by David Cote

"How good can a jukebox musical be? As good as "Bullets Over Broadway," Woody Allen's new stage version of his 1994 film, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman. The book is funny, the staging inventive, the cast outstanding, the sets and costumes satisfyingly slick." 
in Wall Street Journal by Terry Teachout

"There's a ton of talent onstage in "Bullets Over Broadway", evident in the leggy chorines who ignite into explosive dance routines, the gifted cast, the sparkling design elements and the wraparound razzle-dazzle of director-choreographer Susan Stroman's lavish production." 
in The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

"Bullets Over Broadway" is the show everyone hoped would get those flickering Broadway lights blazing again. In certain wonderful ways -- Susan Stroman's happy-tappy dance rhythms, the dazzling design work on everything from proscenium curtain to wigs, and a fabulous chorus line of dancing dolls, molls and gangsters -- Woody Allen's showbiz musical is the answer to a Broadway tinhorn's prayer." 
in Variety by Marilyn Stasio

"Director-choreographer Susan Stroman is back in idea-crazy form in Allen's adaptation of his 1994 backstage-Broadway movie about gangsters and tootsies and self-serious thespians in the '20s. The show takes a while to hit its stride, feeling competent but mechanical at first, as if the job could only get done if everyone bellows and hard-sells the lamest jokes. But once inspiration strikes -- and it eventually does -- the smartly cast, good-looking production relaxes into the confidence of its own gleeful, high-gloss ridiculousness."
in Newsday by Linda Winer

"Susan Stroman, the Tony-winning director-choreographer ("The Producers") who amps up the material in uncomfortably vulgar fashion. (Yard-long phallus, anyone, for "The Hot Dog Song?")"
in The Washington Post by Peter Marks

"Backstage musicals bring out the best in director and choreographer Susan Stroman, and her production of "Bullets" has electricity that at times matches her high-voltage staging of "The Producers." Even when the jokes fall flat and the songs (all borrowed from the period, many revamped by Glen Kelly) seem incongruous, the show has the galloping vigor of a runaway hit, if few of the ecstatic peaks...Stroman's staging moves with an effervescent fluidity - gangsters and flappers glide by, each in high Cotton Club style - yet the book isn't as spry." 
in Los Angeles Times by Charles McNulty

"The mark of director-choreographer Stroman...is all over the deliciously escapist piece, which boasts showstoppers and glitzy costumes that would be right at home in a vaudeville revue... What's important here is this: Stroman's brand of showmanship and Allen's unparalleled wit go together, in the end, just like a hot dog and a roll." 
in NBC New York by Robert Kahn

"On the plus side, director and choreographer Susan Stroman's dance numbers pack sure-footed pizzazz. And the good-looking production depicts 1929 New York with wit and grace notes...But working in tandem with Allen, who adapted the screenplay of his Oscar-winning 1994 comedy while dealing with anything-but-amusing personal issues, Stroman doesn't match the zany, out-of-this-world wow factor of her collaboration with Mel Brooks on "The Producers"..." 
in New York Daily News by Joe Dziemianowicz

"The Broadway show makes a Sinclair-sized effort to persuade us of the value of early-20th-century songs shoehorned into a 1929 setting. The attempt is intermittently enjoyable, extremely well crafted by the director/choreographer Susan Stroman, and progressively enthralling." 
in Financial Times by Brendan Lemon

"... it's Stroman who makes this baby sing and dance, not just literally but spiritually. The playful wit and exuberance that were stifled by the material in her last Main Stemouting, Big Fish, are in full force here, and are supported by performers and designers (among the latter the great William Ivey Long, whose costumes are especially scrumptious) who seem to never run out of steam." 
in USA Today by Elysa Gardner

"It's Stroman's vision that will keep this cute, brashy ode to Broadway on Broadway for long to come. She has staged a truly deliciously vulgar scene sung to "The Hot Dog Song" that, let's put it bluntly, will not be making the Tony telecast. She has teamed up with Santo Loquasto's ambitious and lovely set designs to put a snazzy looking real car onstage and yet also make a train out of dancers dressed as red caps in white gloves. When she has mobsters in three-piece suits tap dance to "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-ness If I Do," their masculine movements are a joy. When the play-within-the-musical is staged, the proscenium has real dancers posing like carved statues. It's all been so well thought out and executed, right down to its bouncy chairs and rotating houses. Stroman has the right to sing, as the title of one song goes "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You." When the critical reviews of the fictional play come out at the end of the show, the consensus must be the same about this fun, beautiful musical: "A work of art of the highest caliber." 
in Associated Press by Mark Kennedy

"Bullets Over Broadway" is Stroman's second bite of the apple this season. In October, she directed and choreographed "Big Fish," a musical about the evolving relationship of a father and son. It wasn't the right show for her fizzy style. With "Bullets Over Broadway," she's gotten a perfect match. And the result couldn't be more joyful." 

in Bergen Record by Robert Feldberg

THE LITTLE DANCER

Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman
Open: 25.10.2014 - Kennedy Center
Photos by Paul Kolnik and Lexey Swall

To see videos of this production go to “The Moving Picture Show”

“…this simply lovely offering near perfectly melds the worlds of musical theatre and ballet and uses those two art forms in the best way possible to tell a charming story. Who better to be at the helm of bringing these two worlds together than Susan Stroman Strongly versed in both art forms with a clear love for both, her direction, along with her choreography, offers some of the best work I've seen her do in years… Stroman and her team of designers deliver production values that are worthy of the Broadway stage, but do not rely on dazzling spectacle to make an impression.”

in www.broadwayworld.com by Jennifer Perry

“Stroman set out to emphasize ballet in this production, and she does not disappoint. Dance is front and center throughout, highlighted by Peck’s exceptional technique and the versatile company’s strong support. The undisputed dance highlight is the show’s sensational 11 o’clock number, “The Little Dancer Ballet,” which reprises high and low moments of the plot in a mixture of styles.”

in Variety by Paul Harris

“That ardor for the dance form and its classical rigor are filtered through the becoming choreography of director Susan Stroman, who, in the footsteps of Agnes de Mille and Jerome Robbins, has created as a finale for this musical — still, it seems, deeply in progress — a delightful dream ballet, with Peck at its center… The more finely wrought diversions of “Little Dancer” occur when Stroman and her corps of dancers remind us that this is indeed a musical about ballet. These dance sequences offer the most invigorating exposure in a musical to the beauty of the form since “Billy Elliot.” Stroman’s choreography here betokens the passion for dance she infused so exhilaratingly into “Contact,” her Tony-winning triptych of dance-theater pieces.”

in The Washington Post by Peter Marks

“As danced by Tiler Peck, the brilliant New York City Ballet principal who plays the central role, this wordless passage brings the musical to a stirring climax. Although Ms. Stroman’s classical choreography is often more correct than inventive, here she finds a way to turn classroom steps expressive, as Marie (Ms. Peck) moves from shining pride in her immaculate technique to confusion and terror as visions of her past life buffet her around the stage… “Little Dancer” unquestionably marks a return to confident form for all three of its principal creators. Ms. Stroman, you’ll recall, also had a belly-flop on Broadway last season, with the fizz-free Woody Allen musical “Bullets Over Broadway.” And yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that, with its soft edges and its slight air of the formulaic, this musical set in the later years of the 19th century might almost have been written sometime in the middle of the 20th.”

in The New York Times by Charles Isherwood

THE MERRY WIDOW

Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman
Open: 31.12.2014 - Metropolitan Opera
Photos by Ken Howard and Sara Krulwich

To see videos of this production go to “The Moving Picture Show”

"Enlivened by sprightly dancing, this colorful production is mostly faithful to the style of the piece. And from the glowing, subtle performance that the conductor Andrew Davis coaxed from the Met orchestra, it's clear that he loves the 1905 score. Over all, however, the production came across as tentative, as if Ms. Stroman were struggling to find a balance between respecting the idiom of the work and charging it with fresh theatricality."
in The New York Times by Anthony Tommasini

"Ms. Stroman's choreography had plenty of sizzle-from the ballroom dances at the embassy to the folk numbers in Act II and the can-can of Act III...However, Ms. Stroman had mixed success infusing that verve into the dialogue scenes."
in Wall Street Journal by Heidi Waleson

"Frantically yet fleetly staged and choreographed by none less than Susan Stroman, it tried to transform a staid opera house into a snazzy showbizzy showplace."
in Financial Times by Martin Bernheimer

"Stroman's strongest suit is her choreography and from the opening waltzes and polkas to acrobatic folk dances to the shouting, skirt-flinging high steps of the grisettes at Maxim's, including a can-can during the set change, the dancing is one of the show's biggest attractions." 
in The Huffington Post by Wilborn Hampton 

"Susan Stroman achieved graceful movement from all cast members, whether dancers or "civilians."...From their part alone, it is easy to see why Susan Stroman has won five Tony awards." 

Examiner.com

"The new staging by Tony winner Susan Stroman is commendable mostly for its choreography...Elsewhere, Stroman struggled to enliven the scenario......Stroman's pacing lurched along, the words' witty edges dulled, and every opportunity for comic timing was missed..." 
in The Classical Review by Eric C. Simpson

PARADISE FOUND

Co-directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman
Open: 26.05.2010 - London's Chocolate Factory
Photos by Catherine Ashmore and Alastair Muir

"... “Theatre is never as interesting as real life,” remarks the Grand Vizier near the end. Unfortunately, it’s an apt judgment on a musical that suffers from a nonsensical plot, a rather tired bawdiness, a lack of imaginative zest and the absence of a single really sparkling number.

in The Evening Standard by Henry Hitchings

“One emerges from the show in little doubt that this is a rare botched shot from both the Menier and the dream-team of Prince and Stroman. Theatrical paradise it certainly ain’t.”
in Telegraph.com by Charles Spencer 

“Moreover, there's not much for Stroman to do. She grabs a chance at staging a sexually suggestive ballet to "The Blue Danube Waltz," which is less suggestive or amusing than is clearly intended. Indeed, treating Strauss' most popular composition in this manner isn't a winning or cunning joke, it's just one of the many lost opportunities in PARADISE FOUND”.
in theatremania.com by David Finkle

"The creative team on PARADISE FOUND are showbiz royalty. It's co-directed at the Menier by Hal (Cabaret, epoch-making Sondheim premieres) Prince and Susan (The Producers, Crazy for You) Stroman, with a book by Olivier Award-winning dramatist Richard Nelson. But they seem to have taken leave of their collective senses. From that point of view, perhaps PARADISE FOUND should be renamed "Marbles Lost", rather than the other alternative that keeps springing to mind: "Purgatory Endured"

in The Independent by Paul Taylor

“Some of Broadway's best have descended on this Southwark playhouse bearing a brand-new musical. We have Harold Prince and Susan Stroman as co-directors, Mandy Patinkin as the star, Jonathan Tunick as orchestrator of tunes deriving from Johann Strauss II. Yet, I fear, all they have brought us is a prize turkey: a pastiche “Arabian Nights” fable of unbelievable coarseness and vulgarity... Prince and Stroman, who's responsible for the choreography, are practised hands who know how to stage even this kind of tosh... But the show fails in its attempt to combine rogueish naughtiness with Viennese sophistication, and, in its desecration of Strauss's melodies, proves you can't pour "alt Wien" into new bottles.”
in guardian.co.uk by Michael Billington

“PARADISE FOUND is a bizarrely dreadful musical about the Shah of Persia trying to kickstart his failing libido on a trip to Vienna at the turn of the last century... And it’s all the more peculiar because it has been produced to such a notably high level. The entire show has been shipped in, as if from Broadway, glistening with the waltz music of Strauss, orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick, staged by Harold Prince and Susan Stroman (it needed the two of them?) and boasting a London theatrical debut by the extraordinary Mandy Patinkin as a bald eunuch.”

in whatonstage.com by Michael Coveney

"Theater is like cookery: You can assemble all the right ingredients but sometime the souffle just won't rise. PARADISE FOUND is helmed by Hal Prince and Susan Stroman; Mandy Patinkin and John McMartin head the cast; and the score comes courtesy of Johann Strauss II. So why are their combined efforts -- and, boy, is this show effortful -- so dismayingly dreadful? “

in Variety by David Benedict 

BIG FISH

Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman
Open: 06.10.2013 - Broadway
Photos by Paul Kolnik and Sara Krulwich

To see videos of this production go to “The Moving Picture Show”

"There’s a huge gap between what you see and what you hear in “Big Fish.” Visually speaking, this new Broadway musical is inventive, playful and often downright magical. But then, we expect nothing less from director Susan Stroman, the whiz behind “The Producers” and “The Scottsboro Boys"... But Stroman rises to the occasion and illustrates the prodigious imagination of her hero, Edward Bloom, by skillfully weaving together Benjamin Pearcy’s fancy projections, clever sets by Julian Crouch (“The Addams Family,” “Shockheaded Peter”) and good old-fashioned razzle-dazzle".
in New York Post by Elisabeth Vincentelli

"Edward's stories do accommodate flashes of Stroman's playful wit. In one scene, characters from a Western flick strut out of a TV set; in another, Edward, as a young solider, heroically chases the enemy through lines of tap-dancing chorines. Too often, though, the choreography seems more busy than vibrant, with ensemble members spinning around creatures ranging from a sultry witch (an overbearing Ciara Renee) to a friendly giant (a resonant-voiced Ryan Andes).”
in USA Today by Elysa Gardner

"I’d say that Will exists basically to be a straight man to Edward, except that everyone here — including Edward — turns out to be a straight man to Ms. Stroman’s production. As she demonstrated in “The Producers,” she is fluent in all styles of theatrical dance, and in “Contact” she showed a lovely gift for finding character through choreography... Here, though, she seems to be drawing almost randomly from her bottomless bag of tricks. Yes, her use of dancers to embody an enchanted forest and a campfire is delightful. And it’s hard not to chuckle when those two-stepping elephants make a cameo appearance. But if the show is all about the need for personal myths, it has to let its leading mythmaker take charge."

in The New York Times by Ben Brantley

“Shabby values aside, the show has its enchantments. These are largely the gifts of helmer-choreographer-magician Stroman, who brings genuine wit to her technically ingenious stagecraft… Resisting the usual Broadway tendency toward over-production, this show is perfectly scaled to the modest level of Edward’s boyish daydreams. Invention, not excess, seems to be the dominant house rule, from the tight choreography, which is quick and clever and never over the top, to the primary-color projections by Benjamin Pearcy that make a comic-book universe of Julian Crouch’s sets.”
in Variety by Marilyn Stasio

"People want to see things beyond their imagination! Bigger than life!" says a circus ringmaster. It's advice that Stroman clearly has embraced, for better or worse. The ante keeps getting upped with each scene and it gets exhausting... Some jaw-dropping stuff is indeed on show: There's a stunning dance scene in which Benjamin Pearcy's projections are broadcast on William Ivey Long's sumptuous cloaks. There's a fun moment between Butz and a giant — an excellent Ryan Andes, channeling Monty Python — who have a good song called "Out There on the Road."... And the act ends with daffodils sprouting from every corner of the stage, a beautiful tour de force from set designer Julian Crouch that would be enough to end most musicals on a high.... After intermission, a big, bombastic song — "Red, White and True," complete with nine dancing USO girls whose bodies spell out "U S A" — proves no one wants to take their foot off the gas. It could easily be the 11 o'clock number in any other musical... Stroman keeps the action flowing flawlessly — and her actors moving through an impossibly complicated world — and clearly knows when to let the beauty of the moment simply shine. She captures the magic of the original story and has created some undeniable magic of her own."
in Associated Press by Mark Kennedy