Tuesday, August 11, 2015
photo: Matthew MurphyNo one path leads to an indelible, unforgettable performance. Sometimes an actor takes a classic, timeless role and makes it truly their own, to the point where anyone e…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:14PM[SHARE]Monday, July 27, 2015
There really is no such thing as a bad night at the Delacorte Theater, the venue nestled inside Central Park where The Public Theater has offered free Shakespeare (and Sondheim, and Chekhov,…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:37AM[SHARE]Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Photo: Joan MarcusLarry David may have left his hit play Fish in the Dark, but make no mistake: he's still up on that stage. And I'm not just referring to the fact that his replacement is hi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:31PM[SHARE]Saturday, July 4, 2015
Photo: Carol RoseggIrish theater values the act of storytelling as much as -- if not more than -- the story itself. The danger each playwright faces is that taken too far, this approach can …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:07PM[SHARE]Thursday, June 25, 2015
photo: Joan MarcusThe trickiest part of crafting a memoir is getting your very personal story to speak to something universal and recognizable for a wide audience. The best works of autobiog…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:08PM[SHARE]Sunday, June 14, 2015
Photo: Joan MarcusBruce Norris can write. His dialogue crackles, his jokes mostly land, and occasionally he creates surprisingly vivid, three-dimensional characters. He's also a polemicist, …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:13AM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 9, 2015
photo: Joan MarcusAn almost-bare stage, two actors, razor-sharp direction, simple lighting, a few props: sometimes this is all you need to create an absolutely magnetic piece of theater. Suc…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:12PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 3, 2015
photo: Sara KrulwichEvery theater season has a "snob hit," according to William Goldman's classic 1969 insider's guide to Broadway, The Season. It's a play--usually British--that cultured Ne…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:02AM[SHARE]Monday, April 27, 2015
When the classic verismo double bill of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci last appeared at the Met, in 2009, it was clear that Franco Zeffirelli's war-horse pr…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:23PM[SHARE]Friday, April 17, 2015
Photo: Sara KrulwichThere's very little to say about Fun Home that wasn't enumerated by Wendy's spot-on comments, so I'll simply say this:I am glad that Alison Bechdel decided to t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:58AM[SHARE]Friday, April 10, 2015
Renee Fleming, Jerry O'Connell, Douglas SillsPhoto: Sara KrulwichFull disclosure: I left Living on Love, the wretched attempt at drawing room comedy improbably playing at the Longacre Theatr…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:50AM[SHARE]Thursday, April 2, 2015
Photo: Joan MarcusTo watch Chita Rivera in The Visit is to watch a great artist at the top of her game, fully in command of the stage and fully realized in the performance that she's giving.…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:57AM[SHARE]Monday, March 23, 2015
Ito Aghayere, Michael Izquierdo, and Kristolyn LloydPhoto: Joan MarcusAs with her previous offering earlier this season, And I and Silence (which Wendy reviewed), Naomi Wallac…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:13PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 22, 2015
Alexandra Socha and Keith CarradinePhoto: Joan MarcusOne of the many worthy aspects of City Center's Encores is that it often provides a venue for musicals that would otherwise go unrevived.…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:32AM[SHARE]Monday, March 16, 2015
Tracee Chimo, Jason Biggs, Elisabeth Moss, and Bryce Pinkham.Photo: Joan MarcusPeggy Olson, the barrier-breaking copy chief on AMC's Mad Men, is surely kin to Heidi Holland, second-wave femi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:00PM[SHARE]Monday, March 9, 2015
Carrie Coon and Florencia Lozanophoto: Joan MarcusI can't stand people who talk during a performance. It demonstrates rudeness in the extreme and an utter lack of consideration for the enjoy…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:50AM[SHARE]Thursday, February 26, 2015
All aboard, ladies and gentlemen! The express train to musical theatre heaven is departing the station eight times a week. You can catch it at the American Airlines Theatre, where a sub…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:58PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 22, 2015
The Winter's Tale is my personal favorite of Shakespeare's plays. It's also one of the hardest to stage well. Neither comedy nor tragedy, it's classified (alongside Cymbeline and The Tempest…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:00PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Robert Sella, Anna Camp, Matt McGrathPhoto: Erin BaianoI've seen shows that I disliked. Shows that bored me. Shows that confused and confounded me. Yet rarely have I seen a show that is…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:42PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 17, 2015
The film adaptation of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years is remarkably faithful to its source material. That is not necessarily a good thing.Strictly speaking, this musical (which pre…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:22PM[SHARE]Monday, February 16, 2015
[This review contains plot elements that are necessary to properly critique the production, which some might consider spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.]In spite of what its cheeky title ma…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:38AM[SHARE]Monday, February 9, 2015
"There is no such thing as an original play." Those words belong to the playwright Charles Mee, who has spent the better part of the last twenty years proving that, while plots and dialogue …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:14AM[SHARE]Monday, February 2, 2015
The central question of Joel Drake Johnson's Rasheeda Speaking, currently in previews at the Signature Center, in a production by The New Group, can be summed up by an utterance one characte…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:47AM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Photo: Sara KrulwichPlaywright Jez Butterworth embraces the poetic in his work. In his 2009 epic Jerusalem (seen on Broadway in 2011, with Mark Rylance), he attempted to answer Blake's patri…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:15PM[SHARE]Monday, December 29, 2014
Photo: Matthew MurphySam Shepard came to prominence chronicling the battered and bruised families of the American West, so it should come as no surprise that he would set his sights on the m…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:55AM[SHARE]Saturday, December 27, 2014
It's not good. It's not bad. It's just nice. And perhaps that's why the long-awaited film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods, which opened Christmas Day, is lar…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:05PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Rebecca Hall and Morgan Spector in Machinal.Photo: Joan Marcus2014 was, like most theatre-going years, a grab bag of exquisite highs, painful lows, and a wide, bland middle. But as Wendy and…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:23PM[SHARE]Monday, December 22, 2014
Marianne and Roland first meet at a barbecue. No, wait. It was a wedding. She's interested in him, but he has a girlfriend. Or was it that he was just out of a relationship, not ready to dat…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:35AM[SHARE]Sunday, December 14, 2014
Call me Joanne Kaufman. I knew from the downbeat of the horrifically misguided new production of Henry Krieger and Bill Russell's Side Show, currently in its final weeks at the St. James The…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:03PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 3, 2014
photo: Jeremy DanielSince his brilliant debut play, A Bright New Boise, had its New York premiere in 2010, Samuel D. Hunter's output has been both prodigious and prolific. At 32,…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:57PM[SHARE]Friday, November 21, 2014
Lost Lake is a brief, largely unsatisfying two-hander that only catches fire in its final moments. As the title suggests, both Hogan (John Hawkes) and Veronica (Tracie Thoms) are lost: she's…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:53AM[SHARE] 
