There's a word in Russian: obraz. Translated simply it means image, but more accurately it refers to an icon or a sacred image, an image replete with expansive figurative meaning. More than …
Like a nightingale caught up in a footrace with a bioengineered cheetah"having forgotten its wings and its voice in a befuddled attempt at high-tech speed"contemporary theater can often feel…
If you're a Shakespeare in the Park kind of person, your summer will be bookended by two characters, the villain Iago and the heroine Viola, making the koan-like confession "I am not what I …
"I thought you said race is a construct," says a mocking, identifiably white male voice coming from the sound system at Soho Rep halfway through Jackie Sibblies Drury's vehement, searching, …
I'm a Tony Awards voter. If you know me as New York's theater critic, this isn't particularly strange or hilarious. But if you know me in person, it is. For the past few weeks I've been inte…
Lauren Yee's smart, feisty, highly enjoyable new play The Great Leap"currently having its New York premiere at Atlantic Theater Company under the high-energy direction of Taibi Magar"is the …
Attending the still-contentious, oddly timed, star-studded 50th anniversary Broadway revival of Mart Crowley's 1968 gay theater trailblazer, The Boys in the Band, is a strange, somewhat remo…
The appallingly talented British actor Tom Hollander has been John Ruskin, T. S. Eliot, and Dylan Thomas; the prime minister and a motion-capture hyena; two King Georges, a periwigged pirate…
Henry James would probably die all over again if he could hear one of his characters describe the looming, intangible something that dominates his life, that he's in search of and afraid of …
Stephen Adly Guirgis's Our Lady of 121st Street is a play whose combustible energy would benefit from compression and claustrophobia, but in the current revival at Signature Theatre, it's sp…
The wolf-eyed Erin Markey wants you to be a little scared in the theater, kind of in the way you're a little scared when you're talking to someone attractive and you suddenly experience the …
Dominique Morisseau's Paradise Blue " the second installment in the writer's "Detroit Projects" trilogy and the first production in her current residency at Signature Theatre " is one of tho…
Lest anyone get the idea that I'm summarily anti"Eugene O'Neill, let the record show that quite a few years ago, with the help of suspenders and hair gel and a whiskey bottle full of iced te…
Things that happened when I was 13: I played first-chair clarinet in my middle-school band. I tried to kiss my first boy (he was second-chair) while we took a walk in the woods. He didn't op…
In 1976 Caryl Churchill collaborated with Joint Stock Theatre Company for the first time to write a play about revolutionary fervor, apocalyptic visions, political optimism, and a powerful l…
We all have that one Onion article that makes us laugh hysterically, then quietly question everything we've done with our life. Mine is "New Evidence Reveals Ancient Greeks Immediately Regre…
From theater that's questioning " or celebrating " the theatrical form itself, to theater that's forging new takes on old stories, to angels and Westerns and wizards, oh my! " this year has …
"I'm afraid we have a bad connection," says the doctor's son to the preacher's daughter. They're speaking over the telephone, but the interference they're battling isn't really technological…
The cutest thing about this morning's Tony nominations was Katharine McPhee's steadily increasing inability to pronounce the words "SpongeBob SquarePants." She had to say them a lot " the Sp…
The revival of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh"now at the Bernard B. Jacobs under the direction of George C. Wolfe and strapped with heavy starpower in Denzel Washington"is the kind of pr…
What is it that keeps artists coming back to the story of Joan of Arc, and why do they keep making a royal mess of it? The material is certainly captivating: Lone young woman"champion of fai…
"It was a great party," reminisces one of Summer: The Donna Summer Musical's three avatars for its central singer, near the end of its speedy 100 minutes. "And I wasn't just at the party""he…
"My geekness is a-quiverin'!" a teenage wizard named Scorpius yelps in excitement somewhere around hour five. He's not the only one. If you've ever wanted to experience the feeling of 1,626 …
A week ago, I wrote about my problems with the current Broadway revival of a very well-loved musical. If shows like Carousel, My Fair Lady, and Kiss Me Kate want to avoid getting shelved, I …
I have a thing for the devil. He"or it"is the immortal reject, the essence of loneliness, of the eternally disappointed desire to belong. The devil wants friends. He wants a bit of his own b…