479 stories by "Cameron Kelsall"
Photo: Joan MarcusLarry David may have left his hit play Fish in the Dark, but make no mistake: he's still up on that stage. And I'm not just referring to the fact that his replacement is hi…
Photo: Carol RoseggIrish theater values the act of storytelling as much as -- if not more than -- the story itself. The danger each playwright faces is that taken too far, this approach can …
photo: Joan MarcusThe trickiest part of crafting a memoir is getting your very personal story to speak to something universal and recognizable for a wide audience. The best works of autobiog…
Photo: Joan MarcusBruce Norris can write. His dialogue crackles, his jokes mostly land, and occasionally he creates surprisingly vivid, three-dimensional characters. He's also a polemicist, …
photo: Joan MarcusAn almost-bare stage, two actors, razor-sharp direction, simple lighting, a few props: sometimes this is all you need to create an absolutely magnetic piece of theater. Suc…
photo: Sara KrulwichEvery theater season has a "snob hit," according to William Goldman's classic 1969 insider's guide to Broadway, The Season. It's a play--usually British--that cultured Ne…
When the classic verismo double bill of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci last appeared at the Met, in 2009, it was clear that Franco Zeffirelli's war-horse pr…
Photo: Sara KrulwichThere's very little to say about Fun Home that wasn't enumerated by Wendy's spot-on comments, so I'll simply say this:I am glad that Alison Bechdel decided to t…
Renee Fleming, Jerry O'Connell, Douglas SillsPhoto: Sara KrulwichFull disclosure: I left Living on Love, the wretched attempt at drawing room comedy improbably playing at the Longacre Theatr…
Photo: Joan MarcusTo watch Chita Rivera in The Visit is to watch a great artist at the top of her game, fully in command of the stage and fully realized in the performance that she's giving.…
Ito Aghayere, Michael Izquierdo, and Kristolyn LloydPhoto: Joan MarcusAs with her previous offering earlier this season, And I and Silence (which Wendy reviewed), Naomi Wallac…
Alexandra Socha and Keith CarradinePhoto: Joan MarcusOne of the many worthy aspects of City Center's Encores is that it often provides a venue for musicals that would otherwise go unrevived.…
Tracee Chimo, Jason Biggs, Elisabeth Moss, and Bryce Pinkham.Photo: Joan MarcusPeggy Olson, the barrier-breaking copy chief on AMC's Mad Men, is surely kin to Heidi Holland, second-wave femi…
Carrie Coon and Florencia Lozanophoto: Joan MarcusI can't stand people who talk during a performance. It demonstrates rudeness in the extreme and an utter lack of consideration for the enjoy…
All aboard, ladies and gentlemen! The express train to musical theatre heaven is departing the station eight times a week. You can catch it at the American Airlines Theatre, where a sub…
The Winter's Tale is my personal favorite of Shakespeare's plays. It's also one of the hardest to stage well. Neither comedy nor tragedy, it's classified (alongside Cymbeline and The Tempest…
Robert Sella, Anna Camp, Matt McGrathPhoto: Erin BaianoI've seen shows that I disliked. Shows that bored me. Shows that confused and confounded me. Yet rarely have I seen a show that is…
The film adaptation of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years is remarkably faithful to its source material. That is not necessarily a good thing.Strictly speaking, this musical (which pre…
[This review contains plot elements that are necessary to properly critique the production, which some might consider spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.]In spite of what its cheeky title ma…
"There is no such thing as an original play." Those words belong to the playwright Charles Mee, who has spent the better part of the last twenty years proving that, while plots and dialogue …
The central question of Joel Drake Johnson's Rasheeda Speaking, currently in previews at the Signature Center, in a production by The New Group, can be summed up by an utterance one characte…
Photo: Sara KrulwichPlaywright Jez Butterworth embraces the poetic in his work. In his 2009 epic Jerusalem (seen on Broadway in 2011, with Mark Rylance), he attempted to answer Blake's patri…
Photo: Matthew MurphySam Shepard came to prominence chronicling the battered and bruised families of the American West, so it should come as no surprise that he would set his sights on the m…
It's not good. It's not bad. It's just nice. And perhaps that's why the long-awaited film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods, which opened Christmas Day, is lar…
Rebecca Hall and Morgan Spector in Machinal.Photo: Joan Marcus2014 was, like most theatre-going years, a grab bag of exquisite highs, painful lows, and a wide, bland middle. But as Wendy and…
