23,017 stories from Variety
Musical is the highest-grossing theatrical event
Keira's fine, but the title role is so miscast that the production never achieves comic lift-off.
Marshall musical takes best theater average
Sophisticated, sexy and stylishly decked out, Rob Marshall's disciplined, tightly focused film impresses and amuses.
The Irish-born actor appeared in numerous plays at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, acting alongside such talents as Burgess Meredith. When the producers of the hit Broadway musical "Finian's Ra…
There's something deeply admirable about "Icarus" even if the show comes off more numbing than bracing.
Lincoln Center today opens a new atrium incorporating a box office that will sell day-of, discounted tickets to performances presented at all venues of the Gotham performing arts complex.
There's something remarkably satisfying about watching Tracy Letts do Mamet.
George Bernard Shaw's drawing-room comedy is as enjoyably biting as anything recently written.
At only 80 minutes, it never wears out its welcome, and its very earnestness conveys a brotherhood message not inappropriate to this holiday season.
Thesp sets the stage for B'way debut
L.A.'s small theaters exist as showcases for talent
Cume falls but 'White Christmas,' 'Race' provide boost
In his solo show Juan and John, Roger Guenveur Smith digs up disparate parts of the 1960s and knits them together into a Frankensteinian whole. The writer-performer takes a hard look at the Los Angeles race riots, the home-front horrors of the Vietnam war, and an infamous baseball game's sudden violence between the Giants' Juan Marichal and the Dodgers' John Roseboro. While Smith's writing is impressively polished, his self-direction in this Public LAB presentation gives no form to his script; the overall effect is of an insightful play sloppily executed, even though writer, director and star are all the same guy.
The most atypical of Ingmar Bergman's celebrated films, Smiles of a Summer Night brought ripe carnality and a delicious sense of irony to its fin-de-siecle gathering of romantically muddled Swedes. Those same intoxicating elements were translated to A Little Night Music, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's exquisite waltz-musical inspired by the film. Reviving the 1973 show, director Trevor Nunn brings a blunt, heavy hand where a glissando touch is required, but the wit and sophistication of the material are sufficient to withstand even this phlegmatic staging. A handful of magnetic leads provides further insurance against the uneven production.
Stars add buzz to Sondheim revival
Short play collections are always a mixed bag, but rarely are they as mixed as the Flea Theater's "The Great Recession."
As an exhibition of low comedy, the show is notable for the cunning design and exhilarating execution of double entendres and vulgar sight gags. But it's thin gruel for more refined theatric…
