311 stories by "Philip"
As a young New York actor, I found employment driving a cab, tending bar…the usual. Every December I'd get out my trusty red costume, fluffy white wig and beard, and make a decent month's …
    "Much Ado About Nothing" revolves around young lovers Claudio and Hero's rocky path to happily-ever-after, but the play is generally a showcase for the roles of Beatrice and…
Last year Two River Theater Company presented a semi-staged version of "The Music Man" with a cast of eleven and seven musicians. Now they're doing a scaled-down "Camelot" with eight and eig…
In order to pull off "Monty Python's Spamalot," you need a dozen uninhibited character actors, that many ensemble singers and dancers, some leggy chorus cuties who can change costumes in sec…
                                         JUST OFF TIMES SQUA…
Don't you just hate it when a good play " a classic, even " is spoiled by inferior acting? (Kelsey Grammer's Scottish Play comes to mind.) I'll take the converse anytime, like "Angels and Mi…
"I LOVED, LOVED it," a friend e-mailed after we saw "You Can't Take It With You." Me too. Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's 1936 Pulitzer-winning play is a thorough delight. The Sycamore fam…
French dramatist Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (better-known as Moliere)'s plays marked the beginning of modern French comedy. Moliere went beyond Commedia dell' Arte stereotypes, creating characte…
Fortunately for the production budget of "The Wayside Inn," all the rooms in the play's eponymous motel are laid out the same, which allows several character studies to play out on the same …
I feel about Theresa Rebeck's plays the same as I do about Woody Allen's movies: the good ones are really good and even the minor ones are very much worth seeing. Rebeck's distinctive "Mauri…
My Shakespeare-scholar friend dislikes the term "accessible" to describe productions that de-mystify some of the more complex texts. That judgment, he believes, is condescending or at least …
In Theatre of the Absurd (capital A), accepted stage conventions are largely abandoned in order to present a view of the world as meaningless and incomprehensible. Robert Caisley's "Lucky Me…
Summer, 1986. A young Navy lawyer is assigned to defend two Marines who killed a fellow Marine during a hazing (Code Red) incident at Gitmo, the Marine Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Â For …
Where else in NYC would a struggling author meet an aspiring actress except in the bar where she works and where he hunkers down at a high-top and tries to write. That's the spin director Co…
Let's separate the play from the production. "Grease" isn't much of a play, but once you get past the mindless plot, the shallow characters and the questionable moral (there's no virtue in v…
Once could be a fluke, twice a coincidence. But when a company consistently transforms old plays by obscure authors – or obscure plays by old authors " into instant classics, it's a ra…
Rarely has a slice of history been as entertainingly " and accurately " portrayed as in "Butler," Richard Strand's world-premiere play at New Jersey Repertory Company. The characters in "But…
[June 16-23 marked my annual pilgrimage to the Stratford and Shaw Festivals in Ontario. Comments on plays seen at Stratford are posted below. Shaw follows soon.] Colm Feore and Donna Feore a…
              I remember seeing "Third" at Lincoln Center in 2006, but I had forgotten some of the play's key elements: the ending, for one, which …
     How would you like to spend an hour-and-a-half in a theatrical legend’s living room while he reminisces and reprises highlights from his career, spanning vaudevill…
          The 68th annual American Theater Wing's Tony Awards will be presented on Sunday evening June 8, telecast live, as usual, by CBS. Also as usual, there…
          Lee Blessing has written some 35 plays since "The Real Billy the Kid" in 1975. The first one I saw was "Cobb." Co-produced off-Broadway by Kevin Spac…
         It's déjà vu all over again. "Cabaret" is back, with Alan Cumming as the epicene Master of Ceremonies, and overseen once again by 1998 director Sam M…
          A review of "Trouble in Mind," on stage at Two River Theater, could begin by praising artistic director John Dias for resurrecting the play by Africa…
          A Raisin in the Sun is set firmly in its time (1950s) and place (inner-city Chicago), but it transcends those restrictions in its depiction of a fami…
