158 stories from Scheck on the Arts
It’s been a mere ten years since the last Broadway incarnation of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Follies, but that ill-conceived version was lamentable enough to warrant an…
It seems almost criminal to take one of the English speaking theater’s finest classical actors, have him appear in a play in a tiny basement theater, and then make the run so limited t…
If Charles Busch’s artistic to the late Charles Ludlam was made evident by such parodies as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and Red Scare on Sunset, then his latest effort reveals the influe…
Anyone who saw Rent in its original incarnation at the New York Theatre Workshop will no doubt be discomfited to see that it has now become a theatrical brand. Just three years after it clos…
It’s not easy to kill Death Takes a Holiday. This old chestnut about the Grim Reaper taking a much needed vacation was a Broadway hit way back in the 1920s, spawned a successful 1934 m…
Tyne Daly has big shoes to fill in Terrence McNally’s Master Class. Not just those of her character, the legendary opera star Maria Callas, but also such esteemed forerunners in the ro…
The latest in a seemingly endless series of plays about crumbling marriages, Michael Weller’s Side Effects never manages to transcend its formulaic aspects. This companion piece to the…
A quick visit to the Shaw Festival at picturesque Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario yielded an unexpected delight in the form of Drama at Inish. This 1933 little-known work by Irish playwright Le…
After several delayed openings, endless technical problems and myriad cast injuries, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has finally landed on Broadway, officially at least. The much maligned, rep…
Tennessee Williams apparently had a bottomless drawer filled with forgotten plays and scripts, so it’s no surprise that in recent years they have begun to pop up with regularity. The l…
A fascinating footnote to pop music history is explored to probing effect in the new musical The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World. Music geeks will recall that the band was composed of three …
Through a Glass Darkly, the theatrical adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s 1961 film being presented by the Atlantic Theater Company, demonstrates how much his work depended on the brillian…
The award-winning Transport Group has lately been living up to its name, presenting site-specific revival of such works as The Boys in the Band and Hello Again in lofts in Chelsea and Soho r…
The Best is Yet to Come: The Music of Cy Coleman, the new musical revue inspired by the famed composer of such Broadway hits as Sweet Charity, Barnum, City of Angels and many others, raises …
Two new Off-Broadway comedies demonstrate that the current crop of playwrights is clearly grappling with parenthood issues. Both Jonathan Marc Sherman’s Knickerbocker and Daniel Goldfa…
Lynn Nottage’s new comedy couldn’t be more different from her last effort, the Pulitzer Prize winning, Rwanda-set Ruined. A satirical portrait of the subservient roles assigned t…
A little show called My Fair Lady provides ample demonstration that the works of George Bernard Shaw are certainly ripe for musical treatment. But the latest attempt, A Minister’s Wife…
Most actors play King Lear as an imperial monarch, the better to contrast with the character’s subsequent descent into madness. But in the new production of the play at the Brooklyn Ac…
That life doesn’t always offer the opportunity to neatly right past wrongs is a promising theme for a drama. Too bad, then, that Julia squanders it.
The centr…
If the title of Tony Kushner’s new play premiere puts you off, wait until you actually sit through it. The overlong and overstuffed The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitali…
Playwright David Ives has clearly had a ball adapting Moliere for his screwball verse comedy The School for Lies, and his enjoyment is infectious. Retaining the basic characters, situations …
A musical whose themes encompass the Holocaust and Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t exactly qualify as a feel good experience. That’s perfectly fine—there’s plenty o…
It may be a time capsule of a play, but the sterling new Broadway revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart reveals that it has lost none of its urgency or power. A semi-fictionalized…
You can’t say that the new musical Baby It’s You! is shy about its intentions. In the opening moments of this show about the mega-selling ‘60s girl group The Shirelles, an …
In his revelatory production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, director David Cromer unearthed the darkness underlying a play that is usually presented as a paean to a more innocent Ameri…
