Ruth Leon is a writer, producer, and broadcaster specialising in the performing arts. She writes criticism, book reviews, and feature articles for newspapers and magazines throughout the world and contributes reviews and features to British and American radio, and arts specials to many other radio and television outlets. She has written theatre criticism for the European edition of the Wall St. Journal, the Times, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times, the Evening Standard, Playbill and playbill.com and for more than 20 years wrote a regular column, Ruth Leon’s London. She was the Founding Editor of Theatregoer, a monthly magazine with national circulation.
Ruth Leon’s cabaret life is rich and varied. She programmes for The Pheasantry and other music venues of Pizza Express, and, in between, she writes, directs and occasionally appears in cabarets throughout the world. GEORGE GERSHWIN’S AMERICAN RHAPSODY, a revue she wrote and directed, off-Broadway and in London, with New York cabaret stars, KT Sullivan and Mark Nadler ran for nearly a year off-Broadway to huge critical and public acclaim. She has also directed revues and cabarets with Patricia Hodge, Rosemary Ashe, Steve Ross, Liz Robertson, K.T. Sullivan, Mark Nadler and Michael Law
She is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning television producer and director of music, theatre and arts programmes. And she is Visiting Professor of Drama at the University of Kingston Upon Thames, where she teaches courses on Musical Theatre, Criticism and Cabaret. She is a popular speaker and teaches theatre and television at university level in the United States and Europe.
She has written or co-written, with her husband, the late Sheridan Morley, eleven books about the theatre and music. Her most recent book, AND WHAT COMES AFTER, is a memoir while THE SOUND OF MUSICALS, is a light-hearted survey of the greatest musicals ever written. GERSHWIN, her biography of George Gershwin, was recently published in Europe and was the main Christmas title of her publisher.
Ruth Leon wrote a bestselling guidebook, APPLAUSE: NEW YORK’S GUIDE TO THE PERFORMING ARTS, and, with Sheridan Morley, GENE KELLY: A CELEBRATION; MARILYN MONROE; HEY! MR PRODUCER; BEYOND THE RAINBOW: A CRITICAL CELEBRATION OF JUDY GARLAND and a CHRONICLE OF TWENTIETH CENTURY THEATRE as well as many other books about the theatre, the musical theatre, and film.
For many years she advised PolyGram Music on their music theatre projects, working with the musicals of Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Kern, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black and Tim Rice amongst others.
These evenings, she is usually to be found either at The Pheasantry enjoying the music, or in the stalls of London theatres, frantically scribbling her reviews.
Ruth Leon’s cabaret life is rich and varied. She programmes for The Pheasantry and other music venues of Pizza Express, and, in between, she writes, directs and occasionally appears in cabarets throughout the world. GEORGE GERSHWIN’S AMERICAN RHAPSODY, a revue she wrote and directed, off-Broadway and in London, with New York cabaret stars, KT Sullivan and Mark Nadler ran for nearly a year off-Broadway to huge critical and public acclaim. She has also directed revues and cabarets with Patricia Hodge, Rosemary Ashe, Steve Ross, Liz Robertson, K.T. Sullivan, Mark Nadler and Michael Law
She is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning television producer and director of music, theatre and arts programmes. And she is Visiting Professor of Drama at the University of Kingston Upon Thames, where she teaches courses on Musical Theatre, Criticism and Cabaret. She is a popular speaker and teaches theatre and television at university level in the United States and Europe.
She has written or co-written, with her husband, the late Sheridan Morley, eleven books about the theatre and music. Her most recent book, AND WHAT COMES AFTER, is a memoir while THE SOUND OF MUSICALS, is a light-hearted survey of the greatest musicals ever written. GERSHWIN, her biography of George Gershwin, was recently published in Europe and was the main Christmas title of her publisher.
Ruth Leon wrote a bestselling guidebook, APPLAUSE: NEW YORK’S GUIDE TO THE PERFORMING ARTS, and, with Sheridan Morley, GENE KELLY: A CELEBRATION; MARILYN MONROE; HEY! MR PRODUCER; BEYOND THE RAINBOW: A CRITICAL CELEBRATION OF JUDY GARLAND and a CHRONICLE OF TWENTIETH CENTURY THEATRE as well as many other books about the theatre, the musical theatre, and film.
For many years she advised PolyGram Music on their music theatre projects, working with the musicals of Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Kern, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black and Tim Rice amongst others.
These evenings, she is usually to be found either at The Pheasantry enjoying the music, or in the stalls of London theatres, frantically scribbling her reviews.