Saturday, January 19, 2013
TALKING HEADS Mark St. Germain’s commercially successful two-hander Freud’s Last Session, suggested by The Question of God by Dr. Armand M. Nicoli, Jr., is about a speculative meeting be…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:57AMThursday, January 10, 2013
‘TIS PITY IT’S A SHORT RUN Cheek by Jowl’s touring production of John Ford’s revenge tragedy, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, landed at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse for a brief run. The tru…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:42PMSunday, December 16, 2012
THE OLD COLLEGE TRY Brown University/Trinity Rep’s MFA program has a solid reputation as theatre arts training for bright, enthusiastic, well-rounded theatre artists. The challenge for e…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:58AMSunday, December 2, 2012
PALE-Y BY COMPARISON On paper, it must have seemed like such a great idea: create a new holiday show as an alternative to the onslaught of Christmas Carols and Nutcrackers, have Pulitzer-win…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:58AMSaturday, November 17, 2012
LEAN HAMLET ON THE BROAD STAGE Shakespeare’s Globe’s touring production of Shakespeare’ Hamlet is currently on the boards at the elegant Broad Stage in Santa Monica, CA. Written in a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:42PMTuesday, October 23, 2012
A DELECTABLE CHESTNUT Kaufman & Hart’s You Can’t Take it With You has earned its place in the American canon as a great American chestnut, one of those charming, heartfelt comedies f…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:32PMMonday, October 8, 2012
SEMI-CIRCLE The drawing room comedy has fallen out of fashion over the years. These extremely well-made, light, sophisticated plays center around members of polite society whose lives unrave…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:01PMMonday, September 10, 2012
SILENCE! THE FRANCHISE Silence! The Musical was one of the big hits of the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival. The parody of Jonathan Demme’s 1991 Oscar-winning horror thriller Si…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:01PMMonday, August 20, 2012
SUBLIME CITY Son of Semele has consistently produced spectacular productions with scant resources in their awkward garage-like space nestled between lower Silver Lake and Historic Filipino T…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:04PMWednesday, July 25, 2012
FINDING YOUR TRIBE Theatre of Identity is a fascinating phenomenon: this genre promotes a particular people’s cultural identity and invites members of that culture and other cultures t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:39PMTuesday, July 17, 2012
DOG OF A MUSICAL The musical theatre canon is filled with bad ideas that made very good musicals. Stories of vengeful barbers, decadence in Nazi Germany, and even wife beaters have all gon…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:51PMFriday, July 13, 2012
MUSICAL ERRANT Expectations should always be lowered a bit when seeing revivals of musicals written before Oklahoma!. In pre-war musicals, songs weren’t intended to move plots forward or…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:00PMMonday, July 2, 2012
DOWNTOWN DINOSAURS The Off-Broadway Musical is an endangered species. The perfect storm of escalating real estate rents, union expectations, and production costs render producing commercia…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:14PMTuesday, June 12, 2012
MAGNIFICENT CHARACTER ACTOR ON THE BUMPY ROAD TO DAMASCUS When Andrew Weems enters the stage to perform Damascus, a solo play he also wrote, the 4th Street Theater immediately fills with his…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:47PMA HAPPENING OF THE HIGHEST THEATRICAL ORDER The Flea Theatre’s young resident acting ensemble, The Bats, is re-mounting their production of These Seven Sicknesses. If you’re looking fo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:54PMFriday, May 11, 2012
PLENTY OF NOTHING Even before The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway, it was fraught with controversy. A New York Times puff piece on the Boston American Repertory Theater pro…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:55PMFriday, April 27, 2012
DON’T EVEN BOTHER Broadway producers often hope lightning will strike twice as they mount shows very similar to past successes. We have recently seen the creative team of Hairspray u…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:18PMTuesday, April 24, 2012
THEATRE GHOST In uncertain times such as these, audiences crave familiarity and nostalgia. Broadway, which once turned plays into movies, is now glutted with adaptations of popular films b…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:04AMFriday, April 20, 2012
LIVING EVITA LOCA Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber – together with lyricist Tim Rice – released the Evita “rock opera concept album” in 1976, a few years before the first theatrical productio…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:13AMTHERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD Ever since Crimes of the Heart won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1981, a cloud of skepticism has followed the award. The announcement that last year’s winne…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:04AMThursday, April 19, 2012
ONE HIT, TWO GUVNORS Once upon a time, you could attend theatre by Americans and watch actors who had worked together for decades. Long rehearsal periods to explore classical texts were co…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:06PMFriday, April 6, 2012
MILES OF TALENT AT LINCOLN CENTER As a reviewer, I don’t like to pander in hyperbole, but since this year has been such a second-rate season in New York, I think it’s safe to say that 40…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:26PMSunday, April 1, 2012
MCC GETS CARRIE-D AWAY The myth that youth market musicals are a low-risk venture has gained strength over the last few years in New York City. Short-sighted producers will overlook disast…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:25AMFriday, March 30, 2012
GOOD NEWSIES, BAD NEWSIES A few months ago, the New York theatre community was all abuzz with the announcement that the Paper Mill Playhouse production of Newsies was transferring to Broadwa…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:26AMFriday, March 23, 2012
A TAWNY STAR IS BORN Tawny Heatherton is the fictional drag persona created by David Drake, the star of My Tawny Valentine at The Laurie Beecham Theatre. As the niece of Joey Heatherton, Taw…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:28AMMINT ACTING IN RUTHERFORD & SON The Mint Theater Company’s mission is to “excavate buried theatrical treasures” and bring “new vitality to neglected plays.” No small task as pl…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:06AMSaturday, January 28, 2012
THE NATURALIST THING TO DO In the late 19th century, Naturalism emerged as a viable theatrical style in response to the artifice that had earlier been in vogue. It was almost inevitable th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:39PMFriday, November 18, 2011
BURNING BRADSHAW Post-modern theater has yet to live up to the hype. Whether deconstructing established forms or employing historical eclecticism, American playwrights writing within a pos…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:58PMHORSEDREAMS AND NIGHTMARES A few years ago, Dael Orlandersmith made a splash with Beauty’s Daughter and Yellowman, winning an Obie Award and being a Pulitzer Finalist. Her work was large…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:01PMTuesday, November 8, 2011
LOST IN THE LABYRINTH In Outrageous Fortune, Todd London’s seminal work on the current state of new plays in America, he writes that the challenge is finding a way to remain relevant to th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:37PMThursday, October 27, 2011
ASUNCION DESCENDING Conventional wisdom in Hollywood says that after you get an Oscar nomination, for the next five years everyone will return your phone calls. It seems Jesse Eisenberg ha…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:47AM 
