23,018 stories from Variety
Escalating tension between truth and illusion -- and fear made painful by hope -- governs the surprising plotting of "Life Is a Dream" thanks to the vise-like grip of Jonathan Munby's produc…
This diverting showpiece has more on its mind than nostalgia for yesteryear.
Seminal moments since SC's founding in 1959
Sampling of comedy enterprise's next talent class
Laff institute uses comedy to coach clients
Signature sketch show has launched many careers
Robert Longbottom's miscast, over-designed production rarely musters the energy or effervescence its riot of candy color and teenage hormones might suggest.
Writer wins playwriting prize for 'Pride'
Broadway legend is in top form at Birdland.
Season to feature 'Annie,' 'Carnival,' 'Business'
Ladies and Gentlemen, in this corner of Chicago's rich theater scene, weighing in with a unique combo of vigorous physicality and wickedly intelligent humor, please put your hands together f…
Annie Baker has crafted a beguiling little play out of almost nothing.
Industry veteran led TV and film productions
New shows boost box office across board
The 92-year-old scribe's latest is a rather laborious postmortem of a recently deceased landscaper, and a life recalled and assessed by his grieving widow, mother and a curiously indifferent…
Despite backing from Spike Lee and local political theater company the Culture Project, the production's tech aspects need polish, but its center -- Andersen -- is pitch-perfect.
'Phantom' sequel 'Love Never Dies' on the horizon
Hach, Rodgers co-wrote teen novel
Is Never Land Utopia, the place where dreams are born (as Peter Pan once sang)? Or is it a euphemism for miserable reality—what Hamlet called this sterile promontory? Evidence for both is vividly provided in Phyllis Nagy's 1998 fantasia on cultural and psychic displacement, now enjoying its U.S. premiere under her direction. The dense, textured script is no cakewalk for either producer Rogue Machine or the audience, but many will find it worth visiting.
Kiss Me Kate goes Goth in the Katselas Theater Company's world premiere production of Scott Martin's bloodless tuner Children of the Night. The intriguing tale of Dracula author Bram Stoker's life behind the scenes in the London theater and his frustrating relationship with actor Henry Irving provide sufficient drama, but Martin's musical style and book are smothered in the dust of '70s Brit tuners. One-note characters and cliched dialogue leave the actors with few choices to make, though refreshing perfs from fine singer Teri Bibb and giddy Gibby Brand suggest some of the material has potential.
Irish scribes from Brian Friel to Martin McDonagh have been writing variations on J.M. Synge's 1907 Playboy of the Western World for decades, but the venerable comedy rarely gets a Gotham staging. In almost any form, it's a show worth seeing, and the Pearl Theater's deliberately unshowy production hits several of the play's high notes. Helmer and new Pearl a.d. J.R. Sullivan sometimes confuses fidelity with blandness, and his leads aren't yet quite sure of themselves, but several good supporting perfs find the populous play's wonderfully mean-spirited heart.
There are key phrases in David Mamet's Oleanna that in their banal simplicity reveal as much about the two adversarial characters and their corrosive dilemma as all their heated verbiage combined. For frustrated student Carol, it's "I don't understand." For her heedless professor John, it's "I can't talk right now." And both of them favor multiple variations on "Do you see?" Miscommunication more than gender politics is the central issue in this incendiary 1992 two-hander, and that gulf is exposed with bristling conviction by Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles. But Doug Hughes' meticulously calibrated production can't correct the imbalance of a manipulative play that only feigns impartiality.
Actor to bare H'w'd secrets in film
With 'Spamalot' on layoff, B.O. drops close to 22%
Contempo work heads to Oz
