Jeff Lunden

Jeff Lunden is a freelance arts reporter and producer whose stories have been heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, as well as on other public radio programs.

Lunden contributed several segments to the Peabody Award-winning series The NPR 100, and was producer of the NPR Music series Discoveries at Walt Disney Concert Hall, hosted by Renee Montagne. He has produced more than a dozen documentaries on musical theater and Tin Pan Alley for NPR — most recently A Place for Us: Fifty Years of West Side Story.

Other documentaries have profiled George and Ira Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, Harold Arlen and Jule Styne. Lunden has won several awards, including the Gold Medal from the New York Festival International Radio Broadcasting Awards and a CPB Award.

Lunden is also a theater composer. He wrote the score for the musical adaptation of Arthur Kopit's Wings (book and lyrics by Arthur Perlman), which won the 1994 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical. Other works include Another Midsummer Night, Once on a Summer's Day and adaptations of The Little Prince and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for Theatreworks/USA.

Lunden is currently working with Perlman on an adaptation of Swift as Desire, a novel of magic realism from Like Water for Chocolate author Laura Esquivel. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Audra McDonald, A Broadway Star Gone Roaming, Comes Home

Credit Autumn de Wilde / Courtesy of the artist

Audra McDonald's new album, Go Back Home, marks a return to her roots in musical theater.

By Jeff Lunden

Originally published on Sun May 19, 2013 8:24 am

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In the seven years since her last album, Audra McDonald has kept busy. She spent several years in Hollywood, filming the television series Private Practice. She's gotten divorced and remarried, absorbed the shock of losing her father in a plane crash and watched her daughter, Zoe, grow up from a kindergartener to a middle-schooler.

1:32 pm

Thu April 11, 2013

'Matilda' Brings Beloved Book To Broadway

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Credit Joan Marcus

The Broadway cast of Matilda the Musical, including Olivier Award-winning actor Bertie Carvel as the barbaric headmistress Miss Trunchbull.

Credit Joan Marcus

Bailey Ryon, Milly Shapiro, Sophia Gennusa and Oona Laurence share the title role in the show, which got its start as a holiday entertainment at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

By Jeff Lunden

Originally published on Thu April 11, 2013 4:49 pm

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Matilda is a well-loved book by Roald Dahl, who's been called the greatest children's storyteller of the 20th century. It's about a much-put-upon little girl with tremendous gifts. Now, Matilda has been turned into a Broadway musical.

The British import, which won last year's prestigious Olivier Award and features a revolving cast of four little girls in the lead role, opens in New York tonight.

3:33 am

Sat April 6, 2013

On Broadway, Old Shows And New Tricks

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Credit Bankhoff-Mogenburg

Willemjin Verkaik is the latest leading lady to play Elphaba, the misunderstood green girl who grows up to become the Wicked Witch of the West in Broadway's long-running Wicked. She has also played the role in Dutch and German in Europe.

Credit Joan Marcus

Hugh Panaro plays the title character — here done up as The Red Death for the show's spectacular masked-ball scene — in The Phantom of the Opera, Broadway's longest-running show. Twenty-two years ago, Panaro made his debut with the show as Raoul, the male romantic lead.

Credit Joan Marcus / Disney

Tshidi Manye (center) as the baboon narrator Rafiki, with the ensemble of The Lion King. The long-running adaptation of the popular Disney animated film has been on Broadway for 15 years.

By Jeff Lunden

Originally published on Sun April 7, 2013 10:08 am

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When I was a teenager falling in love with the theater, I picked up a book called Broadway's Greatest Musicals. The sole criterion for inclusion was that a show run for at least 500 performances, which translates to about a year and a quarter.

How quaint.

4:25 pm

Mon April 1, 2013

Tom Hanks And Nora Ephron's 'Lucky Guy' Make Their Broadway Debuts

Credit Boneau / Bryan-Brown

Nora Ephron's final play, Lucky Guy, tells the story of controversial New York columnist Mike McAlary, played by Tom Hanks. (Also pictured: Peter Gerety as John Cotter).

By Jeff Lunden

Originally published on Mon April 1, 2013 7:57 pm

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Several years ago, when Nora Ephron handed Tom Hanks an early draft of Lucky Guy, her play about tabloid journalist Mike McAlary, he had a pretty strong reaction.

"I said, 'Well, that guy's sure a jerk!' I used another word besides jerk — I know what you can say on NPR," he says. "And she laughed and she said, 'Well, he kinda was. But he was kinda great, too.'"

5:20 pm

Tue March 5, 2013

For This Pair Of Clowns, 'Old Hats' Mean New Laughs

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Credit Joan Marcus

Nellie McKay, David Shiner and Bill Irwin use old-time comedy, newfangled tricks and zany music to score laughs in their new theatrical revue, Old Hats.

Credit Joan Marcus

Shiner and Irwin last collaborated in Fool Moon, which premiered on Broadway in 1992.

By Jeff Lunden

Originally published on Tue March 5, 2013 6:14 pm

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Twenty years ago, theatrical clowns Bill Irwin and David Shiner collaborated on a Broadway show called Fool Moon — a giddy mixture of slapstick, improv and audience participation that proved such a success that it came back to Broadway for two more runs and toured both the U.S. and Europe. Now Irwin and Shiner have put together a new show called Old Hats, and it's been receiving rave reviews off-Broadway.

Irwin and Shiner's rubber-faced, loose-bodied clowning hasn't gotten easier over two decades.

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1:03 am

Sat May 18, 2013