Broadway just wrapped up its first season after the pandemic lockdown, and boy, was it a doozy: After all the delays, COVID surges and cast replacements, a whopping 35 new productions opened…
Debra Messing has only been in the Broadway play "Birthday Candles" since March, but in some ways, she feels more deeply connected to her character Ernestine than she felt to the leading rol…
A bare set. Actors making stew on stage. An abundance of hand-held fog machines. Vague contemporary setting and costumes. A generally spooky atmosphere. Put all the ingredients together and …
I am woman, hear me roar " with laughter, at "POTUS: or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive," playwright Selina Fillinger's delicious feminist farce about th…
Sometimes being nice has its rewards. Take Buddy Young Jr., the bitter, self-centered, self-destructive comedian from the 1992 flop film "Mr. Saturday Night," which Billy Crystal starred in,…
Subjectivity is conditional. We can only understand our own points of view in relation to the differences that separate us. If art often intends to complete the circle ("look at how these ot…
Thornton Wilder's allegorical play "The Skin of Our Teeth" is bizarre, abstract and convoluted; it's not to be taken seriously. Or so Sabina (Gabby Beans) tells the audience at Lincoln Cente…
"You ever feel like there's someone watching from the shadows?" asks Beanie Feldstein's Fanny Brice, as haunting apparitions from the Ziegfeld star's past waft in and out in a kind of "Fanny…
In the theatrical annals of wild and wicked stage plays, there are black comedies, blacker comedies, and blacker-than-the-dead-of-night comedies like "Hangmen." Â Prolific playwright Marti…
Ntozake Shange's iridescent choreopoem "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf" is the story of Black women and their often-disregarded human experiences. Wh…
Mommas, don't give your daughters the kind of nicknames that would appeal to their pedophile uncles. Cursed with a cutesy moniker like "Li'l Bit," what do you think might happen to a suppose…
Some stories creep up in disguise, hiding a ghastly scowl. "The Minutes" is an astonishing feat from playwright and star Tracy Letts, not least for its brilliant finesse in orchestrating aud…
Since 1997, composer-singer Barry Manilow and lyricist-librettist Bruce Sussman " the team behind iconic '70s pop classics such as "Copacabana" " have been looking to get their wise and witt…
Mike Bartlett's latest play is monstrous. In a good way. Shapeshifting actor Bertie Carvel, having shot to fame creating the marvelously alarming Miss Trunchbull in "Matilda," is back to wor…
When is a timeless children's tale not quite right for children's theater? When it is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's beloved and ever-so-slightly surreal 1942 novella, "The Little Prince." Publ…
One minute you're a teenager ready to "rebel against the universe," then in the blink of an eye you're a senior making peace with the life that was handed to you. That's the short and sweet …
Oh, what mean and nasty things men said about women who dared to fight for the right to vote in America. Here are some of those choice insults, taken from the very first song ("Watch Out for…
On a superficial level, the new musical "Suffs" looks a lot like "Hamilton" " so much so that "some people are calling it 'Hermilton,'" said one of the show's stars, Jenn Colella, on the new…
Public and personal identities are constantly being examined, teased and tested in Richard Greenberg's "Take Me Out," his grand paean to baseball and ontological quandaries, which is receivi…
The body can sometimes say more than words, but even the most expressive moves cannot make a coherent case for "Paradise Square." The blunt and belabored history lesson of a new musical set …
"We've discussed this. We've discussed this many times." That wearied line, which appears in the final scene of David Hare's new play "Straight Line Crazy," is spoken by Ariel Porter (Samuel…
Expanding accessibility is an ongoing concern for Broadway " and this spring, the musician Gaelynn Lea arrives with lessons she learned from advocating for the cause in the music industry. L…
John is desperate: "It's not a competition. Please, please it mustn't be that." Cue his girlfriend's snapped retort: "Then what is it really?" Good question. As revealed by the climactic rou…
Now that omicron is in decline, Broadway optimism is on the rise. After a bumpy holiday season rife with performance disruptions, show closures and hiatuses due to the highly contagious COVI…
Just how vocally demanding are roles in Broadway musicals like "Hamilton" and "Dear Evan Hansen" " and how much singing is too much? If two professors at New York University had their way, B…