The four women who gather for the funeral of a man they all once loved in Out of the Mouth of Babes wouldn't pass the Bechdel test. That feminist litmus test requires tha…
Joe Tippett is a terrific actor. He's particularly good at mining humor when playing "bros" and other kinds of macho guys. But he's also great at revealing how his characters want to be…
The last two minutes are the only fully satisfying ones in Incognito, the new Nick Payne play that is running at Manhattan Theatre Club through July 10. The problem is that while they really…
As soon as I finished Wednesday's post on the highs and lows of some of the musicals up for Tonys, I realized that I should give some equal hi-lo time to a few of the nominated plays as well…
From the moment that Hamilton's revolutionary troupe stepped onto the stage at the Richard Rodgers Theatre last summer, it was clear that Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop infused celebration of …
Sometimes I think John Doyle's middle name must be Minimalist. The British director made his reputation with small-scale productions of Stephen Sondheim musicals in which the actors played i…
It's been a long time since I walked out of a musical and couldn't wait to hear the score again. Luckily, the singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell recorded a concept album for Hadestown,…
Ooops. I've slipped into a hole again. Not to worry; it's all good stuff. I'm working on a freelance piece for one of my favorite publications (more about that in the future) and gearing up …
Daphne's Dive, the bar in the play of that same name which opened this week at Signature Theatre, seems to be a great place to hang out. The bar's genial regulars are diverse ethnically and …
Show biz people love shows about show business, especially ones in which a band of artists overcome some adversity to put on a show. And right now, two productions about works that broke thr…
Fully Committed, the one-man show about a reservation clerk at a trendy high-end restaurant, didn't get any Tony nominations. But in a season filled with weightier plays about such downer su…
There's been so much going on in the theater (and in my life) over the past few weeks that I haven't had a chance to talk about one of my favorite shows of the spring season: The Effect, whi…
The nominees for this year's Tony for Best Musical are all the kind of big song-and-dance shows that have for years defined the Broadway musical. But I sometimes think the future of the art …
People are always saying "it's an honor to be nominated" when they get a slot on the ballot for a top award like the Tonys. But that's more true than ever for most of the nominees in the mus…
It's a shame that the Red Bull Theater's production of The School for Scandal is closing May 8, after barely a two-week run because this is one of the most delightful shows I've seen this se…
Nearly all my theatergoing friends have been asking me if I've seen, and what I think about, The Royale, which has been running at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse theater for the last sev…
If you call yourself any kind of theater lover, then you know that today is the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death. So, like much of the rest of the world, I'm taking time out …
For the first time in years, I attended the announcement of the Outer Critics Circle nominations, which The Algonquin Hotel graciously hosted in its Blue Bar yesterday morning. I wanted to s…
Now that transgender people are popping up on TV shows ("Transparent," "Orange is the New Black") in plays (Hir, Southern Comfort) and even on fashion runways (click here), the one muted let…
Your mood when you walk into a theater can have a lot to do with what you think of a show when you walk out. And so perhaps because I've been wrestling with some of the issues"the mean…
Pericles doesn't show up on the lists of Shakespeare's greatest hits. It didn't even make it into the First Folio. And most scholars say the Bard didn't actually write all of it anyway. This…
Some men sit through plays with the resigned demeanor of boys serving detention and longing for the school bell to ring. But not the men at the performance I attended of Hold On to Me Darlin…
The things I like the most about the new play Familiar are the things I can talk about the least. Unless I want to spoil the experience of your seeing this lovely work by the Zimbabwean-Amer…
The actress Marin Ireland can do no wrong in my book and she shows why that's so in Ironbound, a drama about a Polish immigrant that's playing at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater through…
All of a sudden the rootsy melodies of bluegrass music are being strummed on all kinds of New York stages. There's Southern Comfort, which is playing down at the Public Theater through this …