Feingold was born on May 5, 1945, in
Chicago, Illinois to Elsie (Silver) Feingold, a piano teacher, and Bernard Feingold, who managed a tannery. He grew up in Chicago and in
Highland Park, where he attended the local high school and was a member of the school's drama club. At Yale, Feingold intended to study playwriting, but moved towards criticism at Brustein's suggestion. Feingold's translations of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's musical collaborations are the standard published English translations. He shared nominations for two
Tony Awards in 1977 for the Brecht-Weill musical "
Happy End": for
Best Book of a Musical, for his adaptation of
Elisabeth Hauptmann's libretto, and for
Best Score, for his adaptation of
Bertolt Brecht's lyrics. The production included
Meryl Streep and
Christopher Lloyd in the cast. Another Brecht work which Feingold translated was
Round Heads and Pointed Heads, with music by
Hanns Eisler, which, as adapted by director/choreographer
David Gordon, was presented under the title
Uncivil Wars: Moving with Brecht and Eisler in a number of venues between 2002 and 2009. Feingold was also the translation lyricist for the 1972 revue
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill. Afterwards, he wrote a monthly two-part column, "Thinking About Theater", for the
Theater Mania website from 2013 to 2017, and also wrote 35 columns for
New York Stage Review beginning in October 2018. In his columns for NYSR, Feingold did not review individual productions, but instead sought "to pull together some general reflections, linking the theater to the world outside, and linking our theater’s many diverse parts to each other." Feingold was a judge for the
Obie Awards for 31 seasons, and served as its chairman from 2006 to 2011 and from 2012 to 2014. In 2020, Feingold received an Obie Award citation "for his work as a leading voice in theater criticism, his advocacy on behalf of off and off-off-Broadway, and for his masterful leadership of the Obie Awards." He was also a two-time recipient of the
George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, first for his 1995–1996 season
Village Voice reviews, and then in 2015 for his
Theater Mania columns in the 2013–2014 season. For the 2023 Obie Awards presented by the
American Theater Wing on February 27, it was announced that one of the awards will be named in honor of Feingold.
Characteristics and views One of Feingold's colleagues said of him that when he attacked something he did not like, such as the Broadway production of
Miss Saigon, he "would back [the] attack with broad knowledge of the subject at hand and thereby supply insightful aesthetic, historical, formal, and conceptual context to [his] readers." In a review of
Miss Saigon which would later be characterized as "legendary", Feingold's willingness to speak bluntly to the luminaries of theater was also evident in his 2003 review of
Neil Simon's final play,
Rose’s Dilemma: "It doesn’t mean anything to anybody," he wrote, "and doesn’t reveal any understanding, on its author’s part, of how plays are written." Another colleague,
Los Angeles Times theatre critic
Charles McNulty, Feingold's editor at
The Village Voice, called Feingold "[a] polyglot and polymath with a deep knowledge of opera and music" and "an unstoppable font of cultural knowledge and insight", and praised his commitment to theatrical tradition. However, he also wrote that Feingold was "not a mentor", was a "territorial animal in a jungle", and that he "treated every underling as a future rival." Feingold, in McNulty's view, had a "recalcitrant and somewhat paranoiac nature [that] made him at times an exasperating colleague. But underneath his curmudgeonly carapace was the sadness of a writer who felt he hadn’t ever been given his due. ... Feingold had a way of alienating even his supporters." But, according to McNulty: Feingold’s greatness rested in the agility of his focus. He had the ability to take an aerial view of the work under consideration. But then, with breathtaking swiftness, he would zoom in for a closeup, discussing the production with meticulous visual detail and sensitivity to the choices of the actors and director.He wrote with an understanding of the practical demands of theatrical production. But he was unusually mindful of the road not taken, of interpretive possibilities excluded by short-sighted artistic decision-making. Feingold wrote for insiders, in which group he included everyone with a passionate regard for the art form. He most assuredly was not writing for consumers casually wondering where to spend their entertainment dollars on a Saturday night.His loyalty was to the theatre and its tenuous survival. ... [T]he chief limitation of his criticism is tied to one of his main strengths: the clarity of his unassailable conviction ... [A] complex humanity was always reachable via his sterling intelligence, and his robust wit had a way of offsetting the pedantic tone that would creep into his prose. ==Works==