Category Archives: Entertainment

For a while there Saturday, it looked like here-we-go-again time at the Red Bank Jazz & Blues Festival, which has wrung itself out from late spring downpours more than once in the past. But an early afternoon rain lasted less...

The Red Bank Primary School was the colorful setting Friday night for the annual International Night, and this year's food-and-culturefest was another sellout, with 320 tickets sold, organizers tell redbankgreen. Click images to enlarge.

Billy Van Zandt, left, and Jane Milmore (with someone else's hands). By TOM CHESEK Long before Kevin Smith turned a Bayshore bodega into a shrine rivaling the Lourdes Grotto, they were the original Hometown Kids Gone Hollywood. While half-brother Steve...

The beachfront borough can now lay claim to its own fair. BY SUE MORGAN As a volunteer at the annual Oceanport Lions Strawberry Fair, Steve Spahr would wonder why the beachfront community he grew up in and still worked in...

The parade thundered; the skies didn't. Red Bank's two-day centennial celebration went off under a cloudless dome of blue Saturday and ended Sunday at 2p with just a hint of a drizzle. Fairly perfect conditions, all things considered, for the...

Vladislav Kovalsky By TOM CHESEK Beethoven? Perhaps you know him as the stony countenance that glowered from atop Schroeder's toy piano in a half century's worth of Peanuts comic strips. Even the most musically illiterate among us is familiar with...

Not to give too much away, but there's a moment in "Mark Twain's A Murder, A Mystery and a Marriage," the new play at the Two River Theater, that involves a last-minute rescue of an innocent by a lawman in...

Playwright and TRTC associate artistic director KJ Sanchez chats with jazzman Joe Muccioli in the theater lobby last night. By TOM CHESEK There are radical re-imaginings of two British stage classics. An erotically charged, aerially enhanced production inspired by a...

By TOM CHESEK The last time we caught up with Aaron Posner, the seemingly Energizer-driven artistic director at Two River Theater Company was in the middle of a boffo double-extended engagement on Macbeth, a tricked-out thrill ride that he co-directed...

Pat Guadagno will navigate the broad channels of Bob Dylan and Mark Twain this month in separate productions at the TRTC. By TOM CHESEK Even on a drab, drizzly Monday night, there's enough of a crowd at The Downtown to...

Springsteen signs autographs before last night's show. Bruce Springsteen gave fans something to gush about last night, according to the accounts we've seen so far. His show with the full E Street Band at the Count Basie Theatre included complete,...

Bruce Springsteen meets with fans late this afternoon before tonight's show at the Basie. Franco Figari came to Red Bank from his home in Milan, Italy this week solely to see Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band take the stage...

Ten-year-old Nick Piescor of Middletown trades licks with the Marshall Tucker Band on stage at the Count Basie in March. By TOM CHESEK As hard-touring, highway-tested veterans of the album-rock era, The Marshall Tucker Band has logged enough mileage in...

Running the Basie more like a commercial promoter than an 'arts' organization has boosted the venue's fortunes, CEO Numa Saisselin says. With a whale of concert scheduled for tonight — at mega-whale prices — the Count Basie Theatre today is...

Some pix from Saturday's Cinco de Mayo celebration at the Red Bank Charter School. (Click to enlarge.) Email this story

Gettin' the band back together... Gone are the days when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band would do two shows a night at what was then known as the Carlton Theatre and the Monmouth Arts Center. But word that...

Springsteen with his wife, Patti Scialfa, and the E Street Band, including Danny Federici, far left, who died last month. Bruce Springsteen fans who paid $1,000 or more per seat for his May 7 fundraiser at the Count Basie Theatre...

Colin Mochrie, left, and Brad Sherwood accessorized in mousetraps. By TOM CHESEK There's Standing, Sitting, Bending. Scenes from a Hat, always a favorite. There's Helping Hands — although you'll need at least three participants for that one — and, of...

Eric McMahon's over-40 mug. By TOM CHESEK One's a newlywed who's apparently still in that somewhat sick-making "public displays of affection" mode. One's a salt-'n-pepper suburban dad to three growing daughters. One's a lifelong lothario whose "single" schtick is starting...

By TOM CHESEK Maybe you first made the acquaintance of funnyman Pat Cooper on a network variety show, back in the days when Jackie Gleason and Ed Sullivan ruled the waves. Back then, Cooper — a horn-rimmed nightclub headliner —...