311 stories by "Philip"
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was a man of many words. His abundance of letters, critiques and essays on political and artistic issues of his day, as well as more than 60 plays, earned him…
A question for those who live in the Central New Jersey Shore area (as do I): Do you remember some years back the disappearance of the 14-year old boy in the Shark River-Neptune area? His ha…
Holmdel Theatre Company's 2000 "Twelfth Night" was as good a local Shakespeare as I'd seen. Holmdel's current production of the same play doesn't reach that level, but it is not for lack of …
THEATREWORKS USA is a treasure. Their imaginative shows for young audiences, presented annually at the Lortel Theatre in NYC, are accessible to all, regardless of socio-economic status. In o…
Who was that man walking along Monmouth Street in Red Bank at 11PM last Friday singing Supercalifragilistic… and eliciting smirks from the smokers outside Buona Sera? Well, if you must kno…
Unlike Shakespeare's plays, which are frequently set wherever and whenever it pleases modern-day interpreters, George Bernard Shaw's are rarely moved from their original settings. Until last…
"Closure" is a potboiler revolving around several red herrings and a MacGuffin. Translation: The world-premiere play at New Jersey Repertory Company is a fairly standard noir mystery/thrille…
The new-ness of new plays must be factored into their evaluations. Often over-long and repetitious and occasionally derivative of other, established works, new plays profit from "tryout" pro…
The 13 plays in the Stratford (Shakespeare) Festival's 2015 season, its 63rd, include four that represent the breadth of Shakespeare's output. His (anyone's) greatest play "Hamlet" is comple…
Plays about Theatre and Theatre People start out with a big advantage. They are written, directed and acted by people who usually know what the heck they're talking about. No play fits this …
[This memory was triggered by a recent New York Times obituary. Renowned jazz pianist Marty Napoleon died on April 27 at age 93. Marty broke in at age 20 with the Chico Marx Orchestra (fe…
The roster of the 870-or-so Tony Award voters (the number varies) includes the boards of Actors Equity, the Directors and Choreographers Society, and the Association of Theatrical Press Agen…
Would you rather see a celebrated play, even a classic (think Shakespeare), ineptly performed, or a pretty good play, short of a masterpiece, elevated by sterling acting? Me too. Well, that'…
It's hard to believe that "Your Blues Ain't Sweet like Mine" is Ruben Santiago-Hudson's first full length multi-character play. (The Obie-winning “Lackawanna Blues” was a solo sh…
Holmdel Theatre Company's performance space is the quintessential "black box". For the uninitiated, the reference is not to flight recorders so much in the recent news. Theatrical black boxe…
"On the 20th Century" isn't exactly an old dog, but fitted out with some new tricks, one in particular, the current Broadway revival is a snazzy affair. That one indispensable element is the…
David Ives is a word-wizard. More sublime playlets than several of the ones from "All in the Timing" have yet to be written. The only ones that even come close are Ives's own, like those tha…
It's not a contest. Neither play is perfect (few are); both treat personal issues with compassion and humor (too few do); and both are given first-class productions (common at both venues). …
(In somewhat of a departure, this piece is more local bio than review. It also appears in the Red Bank, NJ weekly Two River Times and is shared here because…well, why not?) Red Bank NJ…
There's an acting-class exercise where someone suggests a line and others improvise a conversation that ends with that line. One I recall: "So it's settled; we'll call the band Three Dog Nig…
Over the last few years, stage musicals that happen in New Jersey don't necessarily stay in New Jersey. At least not if they've happened at Paper Mill Playhouse, where the Broadway re-re-rev…
There's a lot more to "Absurd Person Singular" than just the comedy. In what qualifies as sub-text, Alan Ayckbourn's play explores different social-class relationships, intra-marriage dynami…
"Swimming at the Ritz," the play having its U. S. premiere at New Jersey Repertory Company, is about Pamela Churchill Hayward Harriman, of whom you might have heard (if you're older than 50)…
Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance" recalls the playwright's earlier (by four years) "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." Both plays center on a couple's love-hate marriage in a veritable river…
                         Four different productions of "King Lear" were among 113 plays seen in 2014. The first, a…
