1,308 stories by "Charles McNulty"
Vera, the old Greenwich Village lefty with bad hearing and some trouble remembering words, was the main attraction of "4000 Miles," Amy Herzog's critically acclaimed drama about progressive …
The Tony Awards are a time for taking stock, but let's not put an undue burden on this year's nominations. To sort out the enigma of the 2014-15 Broadway season would require dusting off Ala…
One of the unrecognized ironies of the whole Actors' Equity brouhaha is that the union representing actors seems to understand better than most that the Los Angeles theater scene cannot rema…
Spoiler alert: The title character of Rajiv Joseph's new play, "Mr. Wolf," kills himself after the first scene. This would preclude him from serving as the play's protagonist, but it doesn't…
Last year marked the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I " a hellish anniversary, to be sure, but one that couldn't go unmarked. Observe how the geopolitical consequences of that c…
Anna Deavere Smith, whose documentary theater offerings have investigated the Rodney King riots ("Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992") and the crisis in U.S. healthcare ("Let Me Down Easy"), among …
Critic's Notebook on the Broadway revivals of 'The Heidi Chronicles' and 'Skylight,' -- in which Elisabeth Moss and Carey Mulligan make politics personal
There's a moment in the new Broadway revival of Wendy Wasserstein's "The Heidi Chronicles" when Heidi, the art historian holding fast to her liberated ideals while wrestling with loneliness,…
An appreciation of theatrical trailblazer Judith Malina
Had Judith Malina never existed, the 1960s would surely have had to invent her. Yet it was Malina, a diminutive, German-born, American theater provocateur of immense boldness, recklessness, …
As Thomas Cromwell, the Machiavellian mastermind behind Henry VIII, Ben Miles surveys the comings and goings at court with a watchful reserve that shifts imperceptibly into murderous stealth.
How do you solve a problem like "Gigi"?
Of all the possible Shakespearean sequels, "Macbeth II" seems among the least likely.
SAN DIEGO " God reputedly made the world in seven days, but that seems lazy by Mary Zimmerman's standards. She needs only a few seconds and some billowing fabric to conjure the four elements…
Carey Perloff talks about the challenges confronting the American theater.
Carey Perloff, now in her 23rd season as artistic director of San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater, doesn't mince words when talking about the challenges confronting the American th…
In the annals of dysfunctional-family drama, Charlotte Miller's "Thieves" isn't likely to find a lasting place, though the producers might want to consider posting the following warning in t…
It's always a delight to encounter the disputatious wit of George Bernard Shaw, a playwright who thought comedy was at its fizzy best when ideas were allowed to collide in the service of pub…
Everything changes in this world " values, culture, technology, fashion " but the power of Cinderella seems weirdly impervious to time.
Images of Patricia Highsmith in her later years suggest that Linda Hunt might be a suitable choice to take on the role of the author of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and other savage tales of ph…
Barbara Cook graced the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday, and while the singer wasn't in tiptop form " she needed a cane to walk on stage, sang from a wheelchair an…
Theatergoing can be such a yawning routine " park, sit, clap, race home like a lunatic.
Before announcing the winner for lead actress at the 1986 Academy Awards, F. Murray Abraham, elated that the recipient was his stage friend Geraldine Page, exclaimed, "I consider this woman …
The Founding Fathers famously had a way with words, but as reincarnated in Lin-Manuel Miranda's sensational musical "Hamilton," they can now bust a rhyme with the legendary MCs.
It's the pesky little things that make up Larry David's infinitely expandable comic universe. All those petty grievances and minor disputes, the slights and slips, the miscues and forced apo…
