1,084 stories by "Matthew Murray"
Enchantment washes over you like a ripple from the mighty Mississippi within the first seconds of the Show Boat concert that's playing at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall through tomorrow …
Satire loses its sting quickly once the object of its ridicule fades from the public consciousness " and isn't replaced by anything else. This proved, time and time again, in The New Group's…
Not all superheroes wear brightly colored tights and a cape " sometimes they're balding, wearing glasses, and sporting humble, rumpled suits.
What would you do if you discovered that your three-year-old is a reincarnated major religious figure from an Eastern-European faith that wants to take him away forever and revere him from w…
What music fills the soundtrack of your life?
In cosmic terms, 23 years may be nothing, but the new Second Stage Theatre production of Lips Together, Teeth Apart, makes it seem like an eternity.
Suzan-Lori Parks's primary hook as a playwright has long been her willingness " daring? " to bring poetry to what often seems that least inherently poetic of American subjects: the plight of…
Pop stars' unchecked egos rarely go down smoothly when wrapped in musical theatre; what makes one a compelling recording or concert artist does not automatically transfer to the stage with a…
Dinner just ain't what it used to be. This is true in two crucial ways with regard to Disgraced, the play by Ayad Akhtar that just opened at the Lyceum. . . .
Superman may be impenetrable " well, to everything except kryptonite " but neither the human heart nor musicals are.
The "mismatched buddies" flick is a cherished film genre, especially when applied to comedy and police movies. But screenwriters? Does it matter if they rub each other the wrong way?
The jumble of styles should be oppressive, shouldn't it? Or at least irritating.
Emily Dickinson the poet and Emily Dickinson the woman do not mesh naturally with Emily Dickinson the character in the revival of The Belle of Amherst that just opened at the Westside Theatr…
The Lyric Theatre as we know it today was not around in the 1940s. (Heck, it's had four names since opening with Ragtime in 1998, after being reconstructed from two smaller theaters.) But yo…
Size is the looming issue in Big: The Musical, John Weidman, Richard Maltby, Jr., and David Shire's adaptation of Penny Marshall's 1988 film comedy"but not quite in the way you expect.
Getting lost isn't always terrible: You may discover amazing places you didn't know exist, or have life-changing experiences you could never have anticipated.
Think you know what you feel? And why? Don't be so sure.
Fluff, at least of the traditional variety, was hardly in Douglas Carter Beane's mind when rethinking Cinderella for the 2010s.
Short of replacing all the seats with sofas and piping in the smells cooking meatloaf and mashed potatoes, it's difficult to imagine how the Gerald Schoenfeld could feel more comfortable tha…
There's a seemingly endless number of plays that have as their only goal revealing all of a character's heart. But how often does a play try to inject you literally into someone's brain?
How odd it seems, at first, that in a family packed with actors, not a one of them has ever done Chekhov!
Like so many other things in life, your tolerance for diffuse, dissonant chatter depends greatly on its source.
Political scandals are supposed to be no laughing matter, but someone forgot to tell Mario Correa. The mastermind behind Tail! Spin!, which just opened at the Culture Project's Lynn Redgrave…
No one plays with time the way Tom Stoppard does.
Can a story be too dramatic for the stage? While watching Stalking the Bogeyman, which just opened at New World Stages, I was convinced the answer was yes. . . .
