221 stories by "Helen Shaw"
On “Star Trek” and elsewhere, Stewart gave millions a theatrical master class, often delivering richly spoken classical language to express cosmic hope or grief.
For her latest autobiographical work, Mona Pirnot collaborated with Jack D. Coen on beautifully composed classical song-cycle.
Bill Irwin, who may well be our greatest living clown, stars in his own adaptation of Molière’s 1673 play about a domineering hypochondriac paterfamilias.
Todrick Hall’s overstuffed quasi-opera is beautifully sung but discombobulated, while a cutesy Fitzgerald adaptation has a talented cast but lacks depth.
Milo Cramer’s excellent lo-fi song-cycle and Eliya Smith’s verbatim play about a notorious video both reveal how young minds are made.
Jon Robin Baitz’s 2010 family bash-em-up gets an uneven Broadway revival, with a cast that also includes Allison Janney at her droll, insulting best.
The playwright tries to strike a middle path in this comedy about QAnon far-right conspiracy theories, which stars the reliably zany Crystal Finn.
Tilda Swinton (in “Man to Man”) and Billy Crudup and Gillian Anderson (in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”) are among the titans making a meal of London.
Technical trouble stalled the opening night of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s all-male take on the comedy. But it was worth the wait.
Daniel Fish’s staging of a C-SPAN segment reveals the complex yet tender relationship between the fiery Larry Kramer and the diplomatic Anthony Fauci.
In her play about a group of very online incels, Else Went reveals what happens to their rabid rhetoric when these people are offered love.
Jocelyn Bioh’s breakthrough 2017 play about cliques and colorism is just as funny — and devastating — with a sharp ensemble and direction by Whitney White.
In adapting the old plot, the director-writer Simon Stone transports the story to a modern Korea from Russia in the early 1900s.
A new docudrama uses recordings of Supreme Court nominations to measure how much (or little) has changed from Anita Hill to Christine Blasey Ford.
Damien Warren-Smith takes (nearly) everything off to play a flightless bird whose natural habitat might be in your very own lap.
For his final year as artistic director, Antoni Cimolino directs “The Tempest,” and like Prospero, he understands how to wield acts of kindness.
In this semi-open-air staging in the Hudson Valley, the musical conjures Paris’s seedy cobblestone streets with an adept Jean Valjean leading the charge.
It’s now haunting Broadway in this adaptation of the horror film franchise about a couple seeking a new start. Instead, they become prime targets.
From 60-minute plays to marathon dramas, surviving the festival and the Fringe isn’t about finding a common thread — it’s about surrendering to the chaos.
Bubba Weiler’s new play about two altar boys at a crossroads includes several beautiful performances, even when the line between sweetness and treacle blurs.
A new production at Barrington Stage Company reminds us of how the “singular sensation” changed our relationship to performance.
Des (Heather Agyepong) and Dre (Daniel Ezra), navigate a mutual magnetic pull in this British love story by Benedict Lombe at Cherry Lane Theater.
A beautifully observed version of a man’s final act, along with a lively staging of “As You Like It,” engage the surrounding mountains in conversation.
César Alvarez’s ambitious new work is a mixed musical meal: It wants to be a call to revolutionary action but is surprisingly lacking in it.
Our critic chose 10 moments from the theatrical year that shifted her thinking.
