My friend, Tony Lin, found a way to take several screen shots of me behind Barbra Streisand in the Put […]
The book and entertainment worlds are abuzz with Barbra Streisand’s new memoir, My Name is Barbra. If you’re a […]
The audio below is an excerpt from my autobiography, The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater. […]
In the summer of 1968, I danced in two numbers in the film version of Hello, Dolly! The audio below […]
In 1968, Dorothy Lamour starred in a national tour of Hello, Dolly! in which I was a member of the […]
When I was eight years old, my mother sent me to summer camp. I so looked forward to this, but […]
Here is the first of several excerpts from the forthcoming audiobook of my autobiography: The Wrong Side of the Room: […]
My autobiography, The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater, was selected on November 14, as Book […]
The following article was first published by Common Dreams on June 29, 2022 Norman Mathews Armageddon comes November 8. Pundits […]
A man sits on a round divan in the Water Lilies room of the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris. […]
My favorite popular music has always been the melodious ballad, with or without words. (Click on my article, The Lost […]
When Tony-Award-Winner Michele Pawk was in rehearsal as Dorothy Parker for my one-person musical, You Might as Well Live, she […]
In 1968, I toured with the Dorothy Lamour national company of Hello, Dolly! to more than 90 cities. Miss Lamour […]
Nancy Walker appeared in countless Broadway shows beginning with Best Foot Forward in 1941 and making her last Great White […]
Sometimes the intrigues percolating off stage are more compelling than what’s on stage. And often, these backstage sagas are never, […]
Dorothy Parker, the Jazz-Age high priestess of the bon mot, is scarcely thought of as a political activist. Yet so […]
For more than a year in preparation for writing my one-person musical about Dorothy Parker , You Might as Well […]
Is it because I am a hopeless romantic? Perhaps. From the time I was a child, those beautiful ballads, most […]
I’ve been a life-long admirer of Stephen Sondheim. Through my years of correspondence with him, he has given me invaluable […]
For years I corresponded with Stephen Sondheim, who was helpful, encouraging, and influential in my career as a composer. Some […]
When Priest Abuse Is Verbal We are bombarded almost daily by instances of sexual abuse perpetrated by religious leaders, and […]
Irene Sharaff, Costume Killer In the summer of 1968, I was hired as a dancer to perform two numbers in […]
Why I Wrote My Memoir I’ve been telling stories about my Sicilian-American family and my career in musical theater all […]
Scene from La Lupa When I read Giovanni Verga’s four-page novella, La Lupa, I knew I had to turn it […]
Ye Are Many—They Are Few In 2012, I wanted to write a piece of music that would address what I […]
Drone: Excerpt From My Play Drone addresses one of the most serious moral issues of our time: the human cost […]
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Go to Books Tab for Information on My Autobiography
Critical Acclaim for The Wrong Side of the Room
“The book’s second half is fully stocked with accounts of stage shows galore—not to mention impressive name-dropping (Barbra Streisand, Betty Grable, Dorothy Lamour, Gene Kelly). These anecdotes from the theater’s social scene glide alongside vivid imagery from the author’s performances and other successes. The book also has a delightful, chatty sense of humor with moments of wry wit that make it exciting to read.
In the end, it effectively celebrates a life of artistic inspiration alongside the giddiness and glory of live theater.”
—Kirkus Review
Read the entire Kirkus Review here.
Readers’ Favorite Review
by Asher Syed
The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater by Norman Mathews is an autobiography chronicling the author’s life as he transitions from a confusing and often abusive childhood, born in a sleet of uncertainty (literally, as it turns out). Masked by imagination and written with a humor that most would not be able to apply to such situations, Mathews is able to harness this creativity and hitch it to his own ambitions as a rising star. When an injury threatens to derail an ascent that defies all odds, Mathews is forced to reinvent and reignite himself once more, and does so amid a whole host of personal and professional turmoil, scandal, and the kind of stories that are all the more shocking – and inspiring – because they are actually true.
Norman Mathews delivers a riveting memoir with The Wrong Side of the Room that opens with a contentious genesis and powerfully surges through to its finale. This is the ultimate tale of a man who is knocked down seven times and gets up eight, except in this case our tenacious narrator is struck to the ground far more than that. But he does continue to rise and appears to have carved out a genuine niche for himself until, “I woke up one morning with a strange pain in my back and running down my right leg. In a few days, it got much worse, and I began limping.” With the support of his partner Todd, he buys a Steinway, dives into formal education, and…well, at first that all implodes too. But Mathews is the consummate phoenix and, much like he displays in the writing of this book, skillfully maneuvers the trajectory of his life’s own narrative into a story that we are fortunate enough to have shared in The Wrong Side of the Room.
Impressively candid, exceptionally informative, deftly written, organized and presented, “The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater” is an extraordinary memoir that will have special and particular appeal for anyone with an interest in show business. . .very highly recommended for both community and academic library Contemporary American Biography collections.
—Midwest Book Review