8,501 stories from Backstage
Writer-performer Randy Noojin turns this one-man show about Woody Guthrie into a stirring call for united action against greed and selfishness by equating Depression-era America with today.
COBU takes traditional Taiko percussion and kicks it up a notch—literally—with a vigorous mix of American and Japanese choreography in this thrilling 45-minute set of nonstop p…
Trav S.D.'s latest excursion into old-school showbiz has its intermittent charms, but the performers demonstrate more genial eccentricity than talent, more "Gong Show" than "Ed Sullivan Sh…
Director Sherri Eden Barber delivers a compassionate production of this choppy, sometimes lagging, slice-of-life drama by Josh Koenigsberg.
Set in an airport terminal, this mess of a musical lacks concrete action and sympathetic characters. As the monotonous songs drag on, it feels like a long wait for a flight.
A.D. Penedo's intelligent and tightly written dramedy about lust and betrayal grabs from the first, an amusing cat-and-mouse game in the guise of budding romance under Christopher Windom's…
Les 7 Doigts de la Main is certain to leave a trace, or a blazing trail, with this high-energy, inventive twist on circus arts.
Citing the guild agreement's "separated rights" provisions, the union is seeking to enjoin the new play and obtain damages on behalf of the screenwriter of the 2000 movie that began the fr…
"Chocolat" and "Cinema Paradiso" are among the likely films that will get the Broadway treatment as the Weinstein Co. looks to line up financing and partners.
There's nothing particularly wrong with Anna Kerrigan's slice-of-life, coming-of-age comedy-drama set in Oakland, Calif., in the summer of 1970, but there's nothing very distinctive about …
“Nils’ Fucked Up Day” is, like its title, an ear-burning piece of scatology. Once banned in its native Romania as “outrageous, obscene, and vulgar,” the play …
This prosaically choreographed work by Regina Nejman is performed by four lackluster dancers and set to a forgettable hodgepodge of music interspersed with idiotic text.
Kate Fuglei delivers a moving and empowering performance, but the heroine's depressing saga in Ken LaZabnik and Ellen S. Pressman's one-woman musical fails to engage for a full 80 minutes.
Author-actor Brian Stanton's compelling one-man show about his search for his birth mother overcomes a few flaws to be a moving exploration of identity and a thought-provoking and challeng…
It's dispiriting to watch the talent and professionalism of Nosedive Productions' artists put to use in the service of something as shallow and glibly cynical as James Comtois' would-be bl…
In Nathan Cuckow and Beth Graham's new play, two twins read and act out a macabre tale that is better written than it is performed and funnier than it is terrifying.
Paul David Young has written a deceptively quiet winner with his new one-hour one-act about three 20-something friends hallucinating possible futures on an alcohol- and LSD-fueled summer n…
This cycle of ingenious short plays is a collection of rollicking mash-ups, each pairing the signature style of a seminal playwright with the story of a beloved coin-op game.
A talented all-male troupe of recent Carnegie Mellon graduates presents a brilliant amalgam of narration, shadow puppetry, acting, and live music, heavily doused with Appalachian folk sens…
Nicholas Billon's subtle, unsentimental play is inspired by the recent discovery of an island off the coast of Greenland and imagines the story of the man who discovered it and his family.
Powerfully choreographed by Berlin native Nejla Y. Yatkin, this thrilling, fiercely performed contemporary dance piece explores the personal emotions and political issues surrounding the B…
Michael Ross Albert's preposterous, self-indulgent one-hour one-act purports to examine four former child geniuses reunited after years apart, but it sails off the proverbial cliff of credib…
This loopy self-help seminar and rock concert teaches how to become a "funky dictator" and epitomizes the sort of well-conceived but laxly staged performances that end up in the Fringe.
Is this history of an unbearably hip musical group an evening of pretentious experimental theater or just a parody of it? Either way, the show is a complete bore.
Writer-performer Jessica Sherr's naive one-woman play about Bette Davis is not remotely persuasive and unfortunately suffused with self-pity, an emotion Davis would have despised.
