Charles Ludlam was a pioneering figure in queer theater in the 1980s with campy send-ups of classic works (Satyricon in Turds in Hell, Hamlet in Stage Blood) as well as Old Hollywood (like h…
Two years after Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, in which a community rejects a truth-telling Cassandra in their midst warning about a public health scandal unfolding in their town's b…
Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness" features prominently in Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brothers Size, and for good reason. The play, which I first saw in 2009 as the middle section of …
The best part of House of McQueen, a paean to the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen, doesn't even occur on the stage of the cavernous new Off Broadway venue dubbed the Mansion at Hudso…
Huzzah! Shakespeare in the Park has returned to Central Park's newly refurbished Delacorte Theater " the perfect venue to celebrate one of the city's most remarkable and entirely free amenit…
Jeff Ross has earned the moniker "Roastmaster General" for a brand of insult comedy he's honed on stage and in multiple Comedy Central specials over the years. But he proves himself to be a …
Nobody could mistake Mamma Mia! for high art. Cardboard-cutout characters vamp through a ridiculous romantic plot, while beloved disco-era ABBA hits are shoehorned in often as clumsily as Ci…
It's easy to see why Elizabeth McGovern might have been drawn to the story of Ava Gardner, another American actress who found Hollywood fame in her 20s and 30s and then moved to London as th…
Quincy Tyler Bernstine, one of the finest actors of her generation, is the heart and soul of Bubba Weiler's transcendent new drama Well, I'll Let You Go, which opened Thursday in a magnifice…
Frank Maya was a true pioneer, arguably one of the first out gay American comics to reach a mainstream audience. In the early '90s, he appeared on MTV and landed a half-hour special on Comed…
Parody is a tricky art form. Off Broadway iterations like Ginger Twinsies, an unauthorized sendup of the 1998 Nancy Meyers family comedy The Parent Trap, seem to thrive on inside jokes but n…
Rolling Thunder, which opened Thursday at New World Stages, is a curious exercise in boomer nostalgia " a jarring blend of jukebox musical and tribute-band concert that evokes the Vietnam er…
We're in a wonderful moment when the stand-up set as a form is open to radical reinterpretation by talents as diverse as Hannah Gadsby, Tig Notaro, James Acaster, and more. The latest innova…
The opening number of Joy, a new bio-musical about the QVC-famous Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano, is a marvel of narrative concision. In short strokes set to composer-lyricist Annmarie Mil…
Ever since its 1997 debut in London (followed by a successful Broadway run two years later), Conor McPherson's intimate drama The Weir has been hailed as a modern masterpiece. And rightly so…
The outdoor amphitheater at Little Island near the Chelsea piers is an apt setting for the exuberant new revival of The Gospel at Colonus, a blend of Greek tragedy and gospel music that prem…
When Heathers The Musical first opened at New World Stages in 2014, you could feel the creators struggling to adapt the caustic 1989 dark comedy that launched the careers of Christian Slater…
There's a beguiling quality to the latest immersive theater piece from the Punchdrunk company that brought us Sleep No More. Viola's Room, which just opened at The Shed, invites groups of up…
There are some provocative ideas in play during Emmanuelle Mattana's brief and quick-paced new dramedy Trophy Boys, starting with the decision to cast women and nonbinary actors as the four …
Jay Ellis (Insecure) and Stephanie Nur (Lioness), two rising stars on film and TV, spark with a sizzling onstage chemistry in Charles Randolph-Wright ripped-from-the-headlines romantic drama…
What does a monster look like? In Angry Alan, now playing at Off Broadway's newly rechristened Studio Seaview (formerly the home of the Second Stage Theater), he bears a striking resemblance…
The provocation in Jordan Tannahill's explosive and explosively entertaining new play starts with the title: Prince Faggot. The show begins with a prologue in which all six cast members sit …
The 7 Fingers is a Montreal-based circus troupe built in the shadow of Cirque du Soleil, but the similarities only go so far. While Cirque du Soleil is now a Hollywood-scale behemoth owned b…
Old Macheath is back, this time flashing his pearly whites as a thief in 1850s New York City in an updated version of John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepusch's 1728 classic The Beggar's Opera …
After a quarter-century absence, Jean Smart makes a welcome return to Broadway in the one-woman show Call Me Izzy, a glorified Lifetime movie about a middle-aged Louisiana woman who endures …