KEEN ON SONDHEIM: Sondheim-philes (you know who you are, and you are many) should be stoked by the latest offering from Keen Company: a rare revival of Stephen Sondheim’s trunk song revue slash musical Marry Me A Little which begins performances September 11 at The Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row.

For all of us who love, obsess over and fetishize cult musicals (I am certainly one, as if you couldn’t guess) the 1988 screamer Carrie, based on Stephen King’s popular novel...

In a New York summer positively crowded with theater festivals, I have to single this one out as having the most summery, exotic name:  Between The Seas Festival of Mediterranean Performing Arts.

CLEAN SWEEP? Maybe not so clean when you discover what housemaid Mary Broome is all about. Seems she’s the best maid the wealthy Timbrell family has ever had, but little do they know that Mary has been performing rather more personal services for the household’s youngest son. Egad!

The dog days of August in New York are always made more bearable by the annual arrival of The New York International Fringe Festival, that granddaddy-of-them-all! A cornucopia extravaganza of theater, performance art, dance, music, multi-media…anything and everything that can be viewed by an audience plays at The Fringe.

Hardly an audition day goes by in New York where a singer/actor doesn’t walk in and sing a song from the Jason Robert Brown songbook.

GET OUT YOUR SHORTS: It’s summertime, after all. And it seems like summer in New York has never been more about theater festivals than it has been this year—and that’s a good thing.

Some readers of this column may be too young (sigh) to remember when smoking in NYC bars, or bars anywhere, for that matter, was the norm.

For our final week on August 16th, we will conclude the summer series with Nice Work if You Can Get It, Avenue Q, Bring it On: The Musical, Rock of Ages and A Christmas Story.

It’s an unassailable fact that Rent was/is one of the most successful musicals in Off-Broadway history.