Tuesday, January 19, 2016
David Bowie's death hasn't suddenly made me like Lazarus any more than I did when I saw it, but it sure has put me in touch with the power of collective mourning. Over the past week, I've li…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:58PMSunday, December 20, 2015
It's humbling, really, just how much theater happens in this town--and just how much talent there is making it. Because I've been on sabbatical this year, I've seen many, many more shows tha…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:32PMFriday, December 11, 2015
About halfway through Lazarus, the self-important mess that is currently a hot ticket at New York Theatre Workshop, the dude next to me started repeatedly noodling with his Apple watch. Now,…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:21PMWednesday, December 2, 2015
When it comes to biographical jukebox musicals that are produced by the same people being depicted, you could do worse than On Your Feet! The Story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan. The musical …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:43PMWednesday, November 18, 2015
Allegiance, the Broadway musical about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, is not the most flawlessly rendered musical you will ever see. Some of its lyrics are a littl…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:26PMWednesday, November 4, 2015
Last night, the cast of Ripcord, David Lindsay-Abaire's play at MTC, seemed a little off. Maybe it had been a rough weekend, or someone got accidentally plastered during the half-hour call, …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:02PMMonday, October 26, 2015
In The Humans, Stephen Karam's funny, sad, squirmily accurate play about family dynamics in troubling times, the supernatural is repeatedly implied. The newly rented, ground-floor New York a…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:10AMThursday, October 15, 2015
We at Show Showdown seem to be in a Public Theater frenzy right now, but their season has just begun, it's very promising thus far, and I love the Public something fierce, so I'm happy to ke…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:18AMFriday, October 9, 2015
Barbecue, Robert O'Hara's twisty, turny play at the Public, is a show I don't want to write extensively about for fear of giving any of the many Big Reveals away. So I won't say much of anyt…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:04AMSaturday, October 3, 2015
Lucas Hnath's The Christians, which has recently been extended through mid-October at Playwrights Horizons, is a compelling play about contemporary evangelical Christianity. It asks a n…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:30PMTuesday, September 15, 2015
I wrote a thing for OUP blog, and figured I'd share it here. It's about the "painted ladies" in Times Square, the history of that particularly raunchy neighborhood, and how silly this p…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:48PMWednesday, September 9, 2015
The Legend of Georgia McBride is maybe not the deepest show out there, but it's great fun, nonetheless. Performed by a committed cast whose kind, well-meaning characters are impossible not t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:46PMWednesday, July 29, 2015
Matthew MurphyThe Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey, currently at the Westside Theater, is a sweet, thoroughly engaging one-person show, and I say this as someone who is not particu…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:40AMFriday, July 17, 2015
Kyle FromanPreludes, which has been extended through early August at the absolutely lovely Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center, is a dense and chewy musical that will not thrill everyone wh…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:31AMFriday, June 12, 2015
Doug HamiltonRajiv Joseph's stunning heart-breaker of a play, Guards at the Taj, is currently running through the end of June at Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater. It is a beaut…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:15AMMonday, June 8, 2015
There will be plenty of time for people to weigh in on the ups and downs of the Tony Awards broadcast last night. I personally thought it was, for the most part, fine: Alan Cumming and Krist…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:04PMWednesday, June 3, 2015
Sara KrulwichThis year's Tony Awards are going to be aired on Sunday, June 7, and we at Show Showdown are so excited that we couldn't help but weigh in with our first ever forecast. The…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:00PMThursday, May 21, 2015
Jenny AndersonPermission, Robert Askins' new play at MCC, is an entertaining if undercooked tangle of ideas that don't fully cohere. Using, as a springboard, the apparently real and squ…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:24AMSunday, April 26, 2015
Photo: Sara KrulwichA 2011 one-character play about a fighter pilot who transitions from combat to an assignment on an Army base as a drone pilot, Grounded, by George Brant, has been produce…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:46PMTuesday, April 14, 2015
Photo: Carol RoseggHamlet's a real pain in the ass, if you ask me. I don't mean the titular protagonist, though he's a pill, too. I'm talking about the show itself, which is so well-known, s…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:21PMMonday, March 30, 2015
Much like the titular subject of his densely chewy, enormously satisfying new musical, Lin-Manuel Miranda is clearly so driven by, fascinated with, and passionate about something that he has…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:31AMSunday, March 8, 2015
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' An Octoroon is one of those plays that is so excellent, challenging, insightful and funny that it leaves me with the desire to see it again immediately, several …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:17PMFriday, March 6, 2015
Yup, I'm with Cameron on this one.The Roundabout's revival of On the 20th Century, currently in previews, is delightful in its embrace of a whole mess of contradictions. The cast is hav…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:28PMMonday, February 23, 2015
Awards shows can tell us a lot about ourselves, which is why I insist on watching them, even when I haven't consumed much of the entertainment content being awarded. Last night was a case in…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:04PMSaturday, January 17, 2015
Jim CoxNo, this isn't a review of the movie. I'm talking here about the Fiasco Theater production, which is currently in previews Off Broadway at the Laura Pels Theater. It's really terrific…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:37PMMonday, December 22, 2014
Every year, I rack up regrets over shows I never got the chance to see. I missed Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 &3) this year, for example, and also Sticks and Bones and Boo…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:37PMThursday, December 18, 2014
Have you seen the Broadway League's recent report on the demographics of the 2013-14 Broadway audience? If you haven't, and you're interested, you can check it out here.I recognize that demo…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:38AMSunday, November 30, 2014
Beautiful is one of those shows I meant to see when it first opened, and then right before Tony time, and then right after Tony time, and then over the summer. . . and then I just sort…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:02PMSunday, November 23, 2014
As Carol Oja points out in her new, excellent book Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War, the 1944 musical On the Town is not nearly as well-known or celebrated as Jer…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:34PMMonday, October 27, 2014
Rex BonomellEvery stage musical is a reflection of its place, time, and culture, and this is no less true for Bedbugs! It's a Musical than it is for something comparatively celebrated or can…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:33PMThursday, October 23, 2014
Brinkhoff/MoegenburgHave you ever seen Change of Habit (1969), the last movie Elvis Presley had a starring role in? Presley plays a doctor who works at a clinic. . . "In the Ghetto". Mary Ty…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:32AM 
