What do you look for in a musical? Songs and singers that make you glad you have ears? Multi-style choreography and dancers adept at every one of them? How 'bout a plot that freezes your att…
I am sitting in Jersey Mike's eating a mini number seven sub when I hear that Stephanie "Stormy" Clifford is suing Donald "Grab 'Em" Trump. That sentence is in the present tense, but you can…
In order to enjoy a jukebox musical, it helps to be a fan of the songbook going in, but that's no guarantee. Â ABBA-adoring fans kept "Mamma Mia" running for years on its easily replicated…
Another fourth wall bites the dust in The New Group's production of "Good for Otto," at the Pershing Square Signature Center. David Rabe's play, which premiered in 2015 at Chicago's Gift The…
It takes more than memorization to put across a solo play (although that element should not be minimized). Those sometimes deceptively crowded affairs require the establishing of unique pers…
A Pulitzer Prize-winning piece by Thornton Wilder opens with no curtain, no scenery. Presently an actor enters and addresses the audience. He names the play and who wrote it. He sets the loc…
My exposure to the Jerry Springer Show has been limited to an occasional YouTube clip, but I've seen enough to know that the following topics are representative: "My mom used to be my dad " …
As if we needed a reminder about the difference between governing and politicking, along comes “The Outsider," running through February 18 at Paper Mill Playhouse. The wide chasm that …
Here's a list of those individuals who should see "A Chorus Line": Anyone who has ever auditioned for a show or competed in any way for any job; anyone who has ever sung, danced and/or acted…
Write what you know, the saying goes. Playwright Matt Barbot and director José Zayas both credit their Hispanic heritage with having inspired their collaboration on "El Coquà Espectacula…
Selected by NJPAC's Stage Exchange as one of 30 plays by New Jersey playwrights to be produced at in-state venues, Monmouth University adjunct professor of playwriting Joel Stone's "The Call…
It may be a tad unfair to begin a review of Ensemble for the Romantic Century's serious play "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" by recalling the most irreverent take ever on Mary's creation, but …
Re-visit with me, if you will, some of the comments I made in reviews of "Once On This Island" in Ocean Grove in 2004 ("…undistinguished, although pleasant enough") and at Paper Mill Playh…
I couldn't find an English translation of Henry Becque's 19th-Century farce La Parisienne, upon which Beau Willimon based "The Parisian Woman," but it's a safe assumption that the original d…
In a modern play about Oscar Wilde, he says "I have spent my life holding language up to the light, making words shimmer." (Wilde might well have said that.) Then his 1895 play "The Importan…
An unscripted moment on opening night of Phoenix Productions' "Seussical" revealed much about how the show was being received. Nearing the end, the Cat in the Hat addresses the audience rhet…
There's a mind game we used to play in college built around someone finishing the sentence "Life is like a Â___" with a concept (film noir, say) or item (a coke bottle is one I recall). T…
We like to think we can size up strangers in a first meeting, but we really can't. Everyone is guarded for a while, with deep feelings and values held in check, at least until the atmosphere…
Two things to know about George Street Playhouse's temporary home on the Cook College Campus of Rutgers University: One is that the venue is temporary only in the sense that GSP will be movi…
There must be as many ways of creating the Forest of Arden onstage as there are productions of "As You Like It." In director John Doyle's minimalist production of Shakespeare's romantic come…
There is little that I can add to the praise that has been heaped upon Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," virtually from the hour it opened on Broadway in 1959. Ms. Hansberry, at 29…
"Prince of Broadway" has been variously compared to a highlight reel, a mix-tape and a best-of list. Simply stated, "Prince" is a compilation of musical numbers from sixteen of the twenty-or…
For starters, the F in "F Theory," world-premiering at New Jersey Repertory Company, does not stand for what you are thinking. No; it represents friendship, in this case not even with benefi…
Pinpointing a target audience for some shows is easy. Ten-to-twelve-year-old girls whose parents took them to "Annie" were seen a decade or so later with one another at "Rent," while their c…
Settings and casting variations on Shakespeare are virtually infinite. "Othello" in an Army barracks? "Shrew" on a Dude Ranch? A female Prospero or even Richard III? A campy "Pericles" set i…