TALKING HEADS Mark St. Germain's commercially successful two-hander Freud's Last Session, suggested by The Question of God by Dr. Armand M. Nicoli, Jr., is about a speculative meeting betwee…
'TIS PITY IT'S A SHORT RUN Cheek by Jowl's touring production of John Ford's revenge tragedy, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, landed at UCLA's Freud Playhouse for a brief run. The true pity would b…
THE OLD COLLEGE TRY Brown University/Trinity Rep's MFA program has a solid reputation as theatre arts training for bright, enthusiastic, well-rounded theatre artists. The challenge for e…
PALE-Y BY COMPARISON On paper, it must have seemed like such a great idea: create a new holiday show as an alternative to the onslaught of Christmas Carols and Nutcrackers, have Pulitzer-win…
LEAN HAMLET ON THE BROAD STAGE Shakespeare's Globe's touring production of Shakespeare' Hamlet is currently on the boards at the elegant Broad Stage in Santa Monica, CA. Written in a tim…
A DELECTABLE CHESTNUT Kaufman & Hart's You Can't Take it With You has earned its place in the American canon as a great American chestnut, one of those charming, heartfelt comedies from …
SEMI-CIRCLE The drawing room comedy has fallen out of fashion over the years. These extremely well-made, light, sophisticated plays center around members of polite society whose lives unrave…
SILENCE! THE FRANCHISE Silence! The Musical was one of the big hits of the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival. The parody of Jonathan Demme's 1991 Oscar-winning horror thriller Sile…
SUBLIME CITY Son of Semele has consistently produced spectacular productions with scant resources in their awkward garage-like space nestled between lower Silver Lake and Historic Filipino T…
FINDING YOUR TRIBE Theatre of Identity is a fascinating phenomenon: this genre promotes a particular people’s cultural identity and invites members of that culture and other cultures t…
DOG OF A MUSICAL The musical theatre canon is filled with bad ideas that made very good musicals. Stories of vengeful barbers, decadence in Nazi Germany, and even wife beaters have all g…
MUSICAL ERRANT Expectations should always be lowered a bit when seeing revivals of musicals written before Oklahoma!. In pre-war musicals, songs weren't intended to move plots forward or…
DOWNTOWN DINOSAURS The Off-Broadway Musical is an endangered species. The perfect storm of escalating real estate rents, union expectations, and production costs render producing commerc…
MAGNIFICENT CHARACTER ACTOR ON THE BUMPY ROAD TO DAMASCUS When Andrew Weems enters the stage to perform Damascus, a solo play he also wrote, the 4th Street Theater immediately fills with his…
A HAPPENING OF THE HIGHEST THEATRICAL ORDER The Flea Theatre's young resident acting ensemble, The Bats, is re-mounting their production of These Seven Sicknesses. If you're looking for …
PLENTY OF NOTHING Even before The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway, it was fraught with controversy.  A New York Times puff piece on the Boston American Repertory Theater p…
DON’T EVEN BOTHER Broadway producers often hope lightning will strike twice as they mount shows very similar to past successes. We have recently seen the creative team of Hairspray…
THEATRE GHOST In uncertain times such as these, audiences crave familiarity and nostalgia. Broadway, which once turned plays into movies, is now glutted with adaptations of popular films…
LIVING EVITA LOCA Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber " together with lyricist Tim Rice " released the Evita "rock opera concept album" in 1976, a few years before the first theatrical production came t…
THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD Ever since Crimes of the Heart won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1981, a cloud of skepticism has followed the award. The announcement that last year's winne…
ONE HIT, TWO GUVNORS Once upon a time, you could attend theatre by Americans and watch actors who had worked together for decades. Long rehearsal periods to explore classical texts were …
MILES OF TALENT AT LINCOLN CENTER As a reviewer, I don't like to pander in hyperbole, but since this year has been such a second-rate season in New York, I think it's safe to say that 4000 M…
MCC GETS CARRIE-D AWAY The myth that youth market musicals are a low-risk venture has gained strength over the last few years in New York City. Short-sighted producers will overlook disa…
GOOD NEWSIES, BAD NEWSIES A few months ago, the New York theatre community was all abuzz with the announcement that the Paper Mill Playhouse production of Newsies was transferring to Broadwa…
A TAWNY STAR IS BORN Tawny Heatherton is the fictional drag persona created by David Drake, the star of My Tawny Valentine at The Laurie Beecham Theatre. As the niece of Joey Heatherton, Taw…