Tuesday, July 24, 2012
"Prison Dancer" is a jovial yet touching new musical at NYMF based on true events about transformation and reform.and featuring Jose Llana in a fine cast.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:55AMMonday, July 23, 2012
The prospect of immortality is more arduous than appealing in "Foreverman," Brett M. Boles' new musical, at NYMF, about the discovery of the elixir of life.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:38AMWednesday, June 20, 2012
The York Theatre's charming revival of Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire's "Closer Than Ever" is enacted with devotion by a quartet of polished singers.
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AMMonday, March 12, 2012
In “The Maria Project,” Marcella Goheen’s odyssey to uncover her family’s horrific long-suppressed secret ought to be more moving and humorous than it is.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:37AMSunday, March 11, 2012
With Dermot Crowley and Dearbhla Molloy as guides, poet Paul Durcan's playful stroll through London's National Gallery, at the Irish Rep, is enlightening.
SOURCE: Backstage at 09:10AMMonday, February 20, 2012
Castillo Theater's revival of the musical "Sally and Tom," about the relationship between slave Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, is emotionless.
SOURCE: Backstage at 04:24AMSunday, February 12, 2012
Rinde Eckert's aching adaptation of "Moby Dick," which Herman Melville himself described as his "wicked book," maintains much of its original power, although its focus has softened.
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:59AMSunday, January 29, 2012
The seven deadly sins are no match for the venality that permeates the bloody, disease-ridden mayhem in this pounding adaptation of Sophocles' extant plays.
SOURCE: Backstage at 04:59AMWednesday, January 18, 2012
Scientific research and subjective domesticity clash in a race to find a cure for an epidemic in Matthew Maguire's deadly play, whose stakes, public or private, aren't high.
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:30AMWednesday, November 9, 2011
Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Nilo Cruz's take on how the Cuban Revolution affected the commercial and romantic lives of individuals caught up in its fervor doesn't quite come to…
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:34AMMonday, October 24, 2011
Odysseus' 10-year struggle to get home from Troy to Ithaca is fodder for this new musical that highlights Homer's great adventure without finding a fresh way to tell the tale.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:31AMWednesday, September 28, 2011
What we don't know, or may never know, about the American torture of Gitmo prisoners is the searing background of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's prize-winning play about revenge.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:30AMMonday, September 19, 2011
How the inescapable sores of the Irish rebellions affect generations is told in this pair of thoughtful but mundane one-acts about the lives of two women.
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:04AMTuesday, August 16, 2011
Stuart Caldwell's dated, schematic two-hander about World War II and the Holocaust is further undermined by Caldwell's static direction and a monotonous, barely audible performance from Gi…
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:29AMClaire Kiechel's complicated, consciously metaphoric new play, while intriguing, is overstuffed with ambitious themes and, despite Brad Raimondo's fluid direction, fails to involve us emot…
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:32AMA.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…
SOURCE: Backstage at 03:10AMMonday, August 15, 2011
“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 …
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:31AMThursday, June 9, 2011
The little things we do to each other and ourselves in attempts to control our lives are the subjects of five one-act plays of varying but admirable quality.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:00AMWednesday, May 25, 2011
In two agile, amusing comedies about the joys and disappointments of marriage and parenthood, Daniel Goldfarb offers an excellent showcase for a pair of 30-something actors.
SOURCE: Backstage at 09:52AMTuesday, May 24, 2011
Ensemble Studio Theatre's one-acts about displaced people trying to connect are only intermittently diverting. Though they're well-acted and presented with care, the evening rarely catches…
SOURCE: Backstage at 03:48AMThursday, May 12, 2011
Daniel Beaty's energetic new musical about gentrification, sex, friendship, religion, and poetry is heady but unwieldy. In telling of a second Harlem Renaissance, its lively cast raises the…
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AM 
