Monday, January 9, 2017
In the beginning there was a play by Anton Chekov that was simply called “a long play without a title”. He’d written a first draft of it in 1878, later called it Fatherless…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:39AMSaturday, December 24, 2016
In 1964 Bob Dylan wrote that ‘the times they are a-changin’, and he might just as well have been referring to the musical theatre in America as he was to the war in Vietnam. Ever sin…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:05PMFriday, December 16, 2016
I first ran into this musical which deals with the lives of several New York subway commuters in 2010 when it first bounced into town onstage at the 59 East 59th Street Theatre off/Broadwa…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:20PMSaturday, December 10, 2016
This highly imaginative and moving musical was presented off Broadway by the Second Stage company in May of this year. It enjoyed a sold out run for a month, and was honored by a dozen award…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:46PMFriday, December 9, 2016
Chazz Palminteri’s career as actor and writer was given a big boost when his one-man play A Bronx Tale began its life off Broadway with the author as its star. The material was honed f…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:19PMMonday, November 21, 2016
In the summer of 2008 a group of artists, business people and supporters gathered to talk theatre, which led to the formation of Theatre East and an inaugural benefit in July 2009. Its core …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:57PMFriday, November 18, 2016
A most elaborate and tastefully glamorous musical has arrived in town to brighten the holiday season. That’s Natasha, Pierre and their sisters and their cousins and their aunts plus a fe…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:50PMTuesday, November 8, 2016
We must thank Andre Bishop and his staff at Lincoln Center Theatre for gifting us with a very early Christmas present called Falsettos, composer William Finn’s musical with a book he…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:14AMSaturday, November 5, 2016
Christopher Hampton’s play, Les Liasons Dangereuse, based on the novel by Choderlos de Laclos, a story presented through a series of the characdters’ personal letters, was first…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:49PMFriday, October 28, 2016
This three act comedy – The Front Page –by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, currently packing them in at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway, is the best revival ever from the day…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:15AMMonday, October 17, 2016
Anglo-Irish Playwright Oliver Goldsmith’s “laughing comedy”- She Stoops to Conquer- was first performed in London in 1773. It’s been a favorite for study in English …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:01AMSunday, October 16, 2016
Let’s get the title out of the way for starters. Simon Stephens, the author of this play, uses it to remind us that the German physicist Werner Heisenberg introduced his Werner Heisenb…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:09AMFriday, October 14, 2016
I imagine there is a first time for everything. There I was, sixth row on the aisle at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, at an early performance of an evening called Oh, Hello On Broadway. I d…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:02AMTuesday, October 11, 2016
The late gifted director Michael Blakemore once said, “When the curtain goes up, the audience is in trouble.” What he meant was that we out front want to know what we’re i…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:15PMFriday, October 7, 2016
Simon McBurney is one of European theatre’s most original and controversial artists working today. For more than 30 years he has led Complicite, the theatre company he co-founded in 19…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:03AMTuesday, October 4, 2016
I took me a busman’s holiday from September 20 to 30, 2016, by joining Playbill on its seventh cruise featuring Broadway stars and Broadway “Ambassadors” who are on board t…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:03PMTuesday, September 6, 2016
I have been viscerally connected to this charming musical about teenage life during the mid-1950s, when pop music was surrendering to the hot wave of rock ‘n roll started more or less …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:04PMThursday, July 28, 2016
I first reviewed this unselfconsciously entertaining musical comedy at the beginning of its run in April 2015. I wanted to see it again to determine how it was holding up now that five of it…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:48PMFriday, July 1, 2016
It’s been only 10 years since Conor McPherson’s word fest of a play ran at the Biltmore Theatre for 101 performance including 21 previews. It was well received not only for the e…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:18AMTuesday, June 28, 2016
You have until July 31st to treat yourself to a trip to the East Village where you will find Hadestown, a rich plum cake of a folk opera, happily ensconced at the New York City Workshop. I c…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:57PMThursday, June 23, 2016
There is so much talent on stage at the Music Box that it’s difficult to know where to begin giving credit where its due. The first elements that deserve “Original! Exciting! Bro…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:10PMTuesday, June 14, 2016
David Hare’s play about a very specific time in the life of Oscar Wilde first appeared in New York in 1998, with Liam Neeson playing the brilliant Irish playwright Wilde, thus establis…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:37PMFriday, June 10, 2016
This charming piece of work has a long history. Its original run was off Broadway at Theater 80 in the East Village, where it settled in for a smashing run of 1697 performances. Arthur White…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:49PMFriday, June 3, 2016
It will be interesting to keep an eye on this new spectacular show – Paramour – calling itself a New Broadway Musical, for it’s a combination of circus, swanky cabaret fl…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:04AMFriday, May 20, 2016
This pretty-as-a picture new musical is by newcomers to the musical theatre, book writers Claudia Shear and Tim Federle, Composer Chris Miller, and lyricist Nathan Tysen. The story, based on…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:51PMTuesday, May 17, 2016
This vintage musical, now over 50 years old, was written by a team of masters of musical theatre. It is the perfect piece with which the Encores! series continues to fulfill its mandate, wh…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:23PMThursday, May 5, 2016
In the rush of incoming Broadway and off/Broadway productions mid-season, I somehow missed the 2nd Stage mounting of this original and quite remarkable new musical by a new trio of writers.�…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:24PMSunday, May 1, 2016
Eugene O’Neill’s masterwork shows up in London or on Broadway every other season or two, and with good cause. It remains a bravely probing look into a particular family, one whic…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:49PMFriday, April 29, 2016
I’m sorry to have to report that Jessie Mueller, the appealing young lead in last season’s Beautiful, the Carole King Musical, has moved on to the role of Jenna in the musical ad…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:03PMAs I gleefully watched Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s brilliant tour de force performance in this one man telephone marathon called Fully Committed, I pictured him playing so many leading …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:44PMFrom what would seem to be the most unlikely source material, Duncan Sheik and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa have fashioned a dazzling and original musical theatre piece. The source is Bret Easton…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:04PM 
