392 stories from The Wicked Stage
I think Isaac nails the problem with Charles Isherwood's public offer to stop reviewing Adam Rapp's work: that to admit how one's personal tastes color one's reviews creates a very slippery …
photo by Sarah Krulwich for the New York TimesI admired Stephen Karam's two previous New York productions, Columbinus and Speech & Debate, and had the chance to write about him for the L.A. …
Another index of how theater is disproportionately on my brain: When Gary Coleman died, the first thing I thought of was Avenue Q. And when I heard that Steve Jobs died yesterday, the second…
The opera composer Nico Muhly recently half-joked to me that he'd like to see all Broadway musicals directed by Robert Wilson, imagining how much Phantom of the Opera, for instance, might be…
Last month I had the pleasure of playing my first gay wedding in New York, and I found the occasion to change one lyric, in the classic "As Time Goes By." Where the original said, "Woman nee…
I place no stock in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, but I'll care for it even less if it disses Laura Nyro.Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie in Ohio certainly doesn't look like your average junio…
The October season preview issue of American Theatre just went up online, and it's a keeper. There's a meaty, provocative interview with Clybourne Park's Bruce Norris (available online here;…
Matthew Freeman has perhaps the best response I've seen to the handwringing about the parlous state of American playwriting, from Todd London's Outrageous Fortune to this recent lamentation …
"As critics get older " and I concede this may be a fault " they also tend to become less recklessly violent in their judgments."-Michael Billington, quoted by Miriam Gillinson
photo of the Steppenwolf production of The Hot l Baltimore by Michael BrosilowIsaac Butler kindly asked me to contribute to his blog's awesome Lanford Wilson "issue," and I turned in a consi…
Parade in the shadow of Lincoln's last stop.All hail Parabasis' Lanford Wilson issue.Tim Rice wants to hurt Charles Isherwood.Alexis Soloski revisits a familiar topic; the real scoop here is…
Last month it was Sondheim; now Time Out gives me another chance to geek out on another favorite composer on the occasion of a production of his biggest hit. What Bob Wilson and the Berliner…
Pace Hunka, I found this, from Billington, bracing:I think people are in danger of getting a little prissy about the qualifications to be a theatre critic. Obviously, you need a passion for …
David Cote, a.k.a. Benedict Arnold (kidding!), has a thoughtful piece in today's Guardian about why American companies can't compete with the UK's far-reaching National Theatre. And it's mor…
Clybourne Park comes home.Apparently a different Hunka.A farce about the IRS in Beijing.Four Baltimore dudes in a diner would totally be singing Sheryl Crow tunes.A most helpful web page.
"Parenting small children is many things. It is a reminder of the essence of things, for one...Parenting small children is also fucking boring."-Catherine Treischmann, in a marvelously frank…
Long-running shows don't get revived.Black-lahoma.Rocky Horror banned in Carrollton.Chatting with David Cote about Trouble in Tahiti led me to this delightful Dawn Upshaw clip.Two scoops fro…
"A person whose financial requirements are modest and whose curiosity, skepticism, and indifference to reputation are outsized is a person at risk of becoming a journalist."-Louis Menand, wr…
...I could be another linkin':When the talkback is better than the show.Passing Strange in St. Louis.Only a Papermoon: Puppets depict the unsung lives of the working elderly in Singapore.Tod…
More Intertube samplings...August: Osage County holds up.Rebeck and LaBute take suggestions from readers...for their next plays.TNC's wise rules for comment flame wars.Romulus Linney speaks …
Cast members of They Simply Said EnterOn Sept. 9, 2001, I went to the downtown L.A. offices of Cornerstone Theater Company to audition/shop for a project in their Festival of Faith, a five-s…
A few years back I had the privilege of interviewing Jeremy Lawrence, a fine actor and translator who's made something of a cottage industry of playing Tennessee Williams in a series of solo…
Yelena action shot by Hilton Als
The New Yorker's certifiable No. 2 theater critic strikes again, with a book report review of the recent Aussie-fied Uncle Vanya at Kennedy Center. As Charl…
Emerging from one deadline valley only to face another, but I still find time to jog about the Intertubes.
Jeremy Barker's extremely helpful "Piss Christ" test.
I get a lot of annoying spam,…
St. Vincent's new video "Cruel" is catchy and disturbing in roughly equal measure, but what caught my eye is the fine, understated actor playing her husband. The bearded fellow is Bjørn J…
