685 stories by "Wendy Caster"
Jon Robin Baitz's 1988 play The Film Society, which takes place in South Africa in the 1970s, explores racism, compromise, the closet, friendship, and many other interesting themes. Unfortun…
The glorious Tamar of the River, running through October 20 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, is a must-see for anyone interested in nontraditional, engaging, and accessible musical thea…
In her sweet mash-up Shakespeare's Sister, director/adaptor Irina Brook serves the audience Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, and actual soup.As the audience enters, five women are already o…
George Kelly's Philip Goes Forth at the Mint is an uneven production of an uneven play that nevertheless entertains and satisfies. Written in 1931, Philip Goes Forth treads familiar ground w…
I went to see Ethan Coen's Women or Nothing with some misgivings due to its tagline: "Women or Nothing is a play about two women so desperate to have a child that one of them will even sleep…
Watching the delightful production of George Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell being presented by the Pearl Theatre Company and the Gingold Theatrical Group, I had to periodically remind mys…
While watching Lee Blessing's mediocre A User's Guide to Hell Featuring Bernard Madoff, I found myself writing Caster's Rules of Satire.General Rules Rule 1: A satire should be entertaining.…
What does a playwright owe a living person on whom he or she bases a character? What does a playwright owe the audience who comes to see a play "based on actual events"? Some people argue th…
The real-life siblings Mary and Charles Lamb lived in the 1800s in London and wrote together. The fictional (but-somewhat-based-on-Vivien-Leigh-and-Laurence-Olivier) Lee and Oliver are forme…
Rory O'Malley, Bryan Fenkhart, Autumn Hurlbert, Lauren Molina, Roe Hartrampf, Heath CalvertIf you are looking for an entertaining piece of fluff, the musical Nobody Loves You at the Second S…
Last night, I visited an old friend who I hadn't seen in decades. The friend was I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road, and the reunion was lovely. Renée Elise GoldsberryI'm…
How did I respond to The Past Is Still Ahead, written and directed by Sophia Romma, at the Midtown International Theatre Festival? Let me count the ways: I thought it was brave, moving, inte…
Do you suppose the performers in the Cirque du Soleil are actually human? For much of Quidam, I was convinced that they are stunning aliens visiting us from some magical realm where gravity …
The website for the movie Pina says, "Pina Bausch [was] a legendary dancer and choreographer. Her unique creations transformed the language …
Please welcome guest blogger Emma-Caster Dudzick. As an avid Harry Potter fan, Potted Potter sounded to me like an impossible feat: presenting all seven J.K. Rowling books in only 70 minutes…
I guess that Barbra Streisand is a legitimate target of satirists and imitators. It's not as though she simply does her acting and directing and retires to her quiet life. She has put hersel…
If you never had the amazing experience of seeing Colleen Dewhurst perform live, you can get a taste of how wonderful she was through the magic of technology. In 1959, John Steinbeck's Burni…
Due to some technical thing or other, we have lost Liz's fabulous Here Lies Love Review. If you happened to have it on an email or feed or just cut and pasted it, could you get it back to us…
Playwright Mark Roberts is not a member of the Amoralists, but his play Rantoul and Die, well-directed by Jay Stull, is Amoralist material right down to its DNA. The characters are working c…
You have through July 14th to catch N.C. Hunter's A Picture of Autumn at the Mint, and you really should. This 1951 drama/comedy features a huge house and characters that would fit right in …
Here's the basic formula of reviewing: a bunch of people, frequently talented, sometimes brilliant, strive for weeks, months, or years, often at great sacrifice, and then I show up and judge…
In Frankenstein Upstairs, Mac Rogers once again uses science fiction as his delivery system to present us with his unique combination of insight, humor, wisdom, and compassion. The plot is s…
Sometimes more is less, as clearly shown by the revival of Pippin currently on Broadway. Or perhaps I should write "sometimes more is less for me," since Pippin's multitude of Tony Awards (r…
Everyone has the occasional bad bad at work; 3 Kinds of Exile offers us a few of John Guare's.The first exile, Karel, has a few advantages: (1) his story is genuinely interesting; (2) he is …
Potted Potter promises to present all seven Harry Potter books in 70 minutes, a promise it only kinda sorta keeps. Its talented, energetic cast of two--Dan Clarkson and Jeff Turner, who are …
