1,085 stories from Show Showdown
So much depends on where you begin a play. Do you start when character A is behaving well? Or when character B is? Do you start at the foundation of their relationship or in media res? In Yo…
Due to some health issues, it has been two and a half months since I've seen a play--what a gift that the first one back was August Wilson's superb Jitney, beautifully directed by Ruben Sant…
Dear Evan Hansen is an intimate, well-crafted, well-performed musical, the kind that tidily trashes the generalized dismissal of musical theater as an emotionally overwrought genre filled wi…
It was late summer 1974 and Debbie Reynolds was returning to the musical Irene for a brief stint before taking it on the road. (Jane Powell had been her replacement.) My friend R and I …
Jay and his mentor--from The Royale. Photo by Charles Erickson I marvel at how many shows Wendy and Liz saw last year. I come in under two dozen--and, even then, I am still playing catc…
In years as rough and depressing as 2016 has been, I am extra-super-duper thankful for the theater. I have no desire, after a year as harsh as this one was, to come up with a "worst" list--e…
Due to some health challenges, I only saw 42 shows in 2016--my lowest total in decades. Yet it was still difficult to carve my best list down to 10 entries.I remain in awe of the breadt…
Joan MarcusJoan MarcusIn very dark times, I'm always telling my students, people crave the comfort-food version of mass entertainment: breezy movies, bubbly Broadway shows, silly TV sit-coms…
The great comet in question was actually in 1811. Just sayin'. Not like it matters: Broadway musicals are hardly the medium through which accurate historical information gets passed along to…
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 is a puzzle to me. Because the show is invigorating, original, and evocative and, yet, also overbearing in its intensity. Based on 70-pages of L…
I can't be 100% certain what William Shakespeare would think of the current election season, but, as Director Michael Sexton and the good people of the Red Bull Theater show in their dynamic…
School of Rock is charming and engaging and the kind of big, shiny Broadway musical you could totally bring your kids or your friends from out of town to. It's basically a stage renditi…
Okay, so here's an awkward thing: what happens when you're a reviewer, and you're not feeling well, and you fall asleep during a show? That happened to me the other night at The Resisti…
Every so often, especially when you don't get too close or take them too seriously, selfish people can be enormously entertaining company. In Love, Love, Love, Mike Bartlett's short, lacerat…
I wasn't even planning to see this brief production of Sunday in the Park With George, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and benefiting City Center. It's not my favorite Sondheim show, and my life ha…
Perhaps it's time for me to make a template for my reviews of Mint Theater Company productions:Thanks once again to the invaluable Mint for reintroducing the world to yet another fabulous pl…
Who are the real actors of NYC? After watching the lightly entertaining, largely painless new musical, The Real Actors of NYC, I'd have to say that the answer is: Klea Blackhurst and Lorinda…
In Richard Nelson's Hungry, which ran at the Public last spring, the Gabriel family of Rhinebeck, New York, had just finished scattering the ashes of their brother / husband / ex-h…
On Monday, September 26, 2016, The New York Innovative Theatre Foundation presented their IT Awards. Winners are marked with asterisks.OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE** The Golfer,Gemini CollisionWorks…
This is not a review. I saw the first preview of Love, Love, Love, and a review wouldn't be appropriate. However, the show is already in excellent shape, and quite interesting, and completel…
James Blossom is a hero--over and over again. He defuses a Nazi nuke miles under the sea and "is given a ticker tape parade and his face on the five dollar bill." He saves the life of the Se…
Six people assemble for a spiritual retreat with varying levels of comfort and enthusiasm: an ultra-limber, ultra-sexy yoga instructor; a lesbian couple, affectionate but annoyed with each o…
My latest Art Times essay is up:The Greek philosopher Heraclitus believed that you can never step into the same river twice because the water is ever-flowing"and also you have chan…
Some friends and I are working our way through past Tony Award shows, and it's been a surprising journey in many ways. This past week, we watched 1970 through 1974. The Tony gestalt has chan…
Small Mouth Sounds, a play by Bess Wohl currently being restaged at the Signature Theater after an initial run at Ars Nova last year, is sweet and diverting, if not as deft or probing as it …
