Sunday, February 3, 2013
Kate BaldwinFiorello!, the 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, requires a lead actor full of energy and charisma. In the current revival at Encores!, Danny Rutigliano, while likeable and ph…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:15PMWednesday, January 30, 2013
In his one-man show, All the Rage (directed by Seth Barrish), playwright-performer Martin Moran shares his intimate exploration of the sometimes-thin lines between hatred and love, victimhoo…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:00PMTuesday, January 22, 2013
A young man dances energetically in his dorm to the music his iPod feeds into his ears. Another young man sneaks into the room and puts up posters of Che and Kurt Cobain. The first young man…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:02PMThursday, January 17, 2013
If silliness can be an art form--and I believe it can--then The Mystery of Edwin Drood is an artistic triumph. From the pre-show call-and-response to the audience-chosen denouement, this mus…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:04PMA screen filling the back wall of the stage springs to life with vibrant video footage of the Everglades and other South Florida parks. Voices speak of nature, honoring nature, the importanc…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:00PMSunday, January 6, 2013
Vivien Leigh, Robert TaylorWaterloo BridgeWhen I was a kid, Sunday was one of the highlights of my week because it included the Sunday NY Times Arts and Leisure section, with its robust and …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:15PMFriday, January 4, 2013
In 2012, Show Showdown published 146 total posts. These twenty were the most read--or at least the most-clicked-on. I have tried to find a theme, but with no luck. Broadway, Off-Broadway, Of…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:30PMAn interesting thread on critics and spoilers on All That Chat got me thinking. As a theatre blogger, I've already thought about the role of a critic quite a lot, as discussed here. One conc…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:32PMWednesday, January 2, 2013
One show I accidentally neglected for my top ten list was Fun Home.* This amazing musical version of Alison Bechdel's brilliant graphic memoir, by Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron, was one of th…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:46AMMonday, December 31, 2012
One of the luxuries of being a blogger rather than writing for a publication is being able to pick and choose what shows to see. Because I get to focus on plays that interest me or are writt…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:54PMSaturday, December 15, 2012
Four hundred years after it was written, Volpone remains a delight. Volpone is a con artist, and his con is simple. He lets it be widely know that he is dying--and choosing an heir--and the …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:03PMSunday, December 9, 2012
The ambitious Extant Arts Company recently presented two shows in rep: Sophocles' Antigone (translated by Sarah Sharp with Extant Artistic Director Greg Taubman) and Taubman's Progeny, a pre…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:40PMIn Ruby Preston's likeable but awkwardly written novel Show Biz, theatre critic Ken Kantor's suicide sets off shock waves that eventually change the lives of nasty producer Margolies, his am…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:57PMTuesday, December 4, 2012
I wanted to like A Civil War Christmas almost as much as it wanted to be liked. Playwright Paula Vogel's sincerity is quite apparent, as is director Tina Landau's creativity. But this tale o…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:00PMMonday, December 3, 2012
The Flux Theatre Ensemble continues their hot streak with the delightful Hearts Like Fists, currently at the Secret Theatre one subway stop into Queens. Three masked crime fighters, all wome…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:12PMThere is nothing new under the sun, yet a truly excellent playwright can make a familiar story new and vivid and surprising and heartbreaking. And Amy Herzog is a truly excellent playwright,…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:09PMSunday, December 2, 2012
A woman giving up on her marriage; the last lesbian on earth; breasts whose feelings are hurt because their owner finds them too small; a mega-multi-tasking woman with a mysterious past; and…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:08PMWednesday, November 21, 2012
How do you like your classics acted? Do you like naturalism with a touch of formality? Somewhat stagey orating? A colloquial, contemporary attitude? Monotones? Performances totally in the se…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:40AMTuesday, November 20, 2012
With viewers on two sides and at tables on stage, the sung-through Murder Ballad happens in the audience's collective face, offering immediacy, excitement, and the chance to be close to extr…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:00PMI didn't believe a word of Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale, directed by Davis McCallum. I didn't believe that the characters were real people. I didn't think that the references to Moby-Dick an…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:17PMWednesday, October 24, 2012
It's 1956, and we're all at the annual quiche breakfast of the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein, and the members of the society, widows all, are salivating with ant…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:07PMWednesday, October 10, 2012
There is a tremendous amount of talent on display at Craig Wright's play Grace at the Cort Theatre. Michael Shannon continues his run of brilliant performances, subtly yet vividly limn…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:46PMMonday, October 8, 2012
The father and mother have made their fortune in less-than-legal ways, but the father yearns to be respectable. He sees their innocent daughter as their ticket into acceptance from both thei…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:59PMWednesday, October 3, 2012
When the superb actor Byron Jennings looks awkward and uncomfortable on stage, something is wrong. In this dreadful production of Jeffrey Hatcher's Ten Chimneys, directed by Dan Wackerman, t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PMSaturday, September 29, 2012
Reviewers are generally embargoed from writing about shows until their opening nights. The producers of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opted for a different approach, inviting theatre blogg…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:55AMTuesday, September 25, 2012
(winners are in bold and underlined)Artistic Achievement Award: 5 Lesbian BrothersEllen Stewart Award: The Theatre Development Fund (TDF) Caffé Cino Fellowship Award: Astoria Performi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:22PMMonday, September 24, 2012
When a show is deeply sincere and takes genocide as its topic, the idea of criticizing it feels churlish and in bad taste. Therefore, let me stipulate that I recognize that Red Dog Howls was…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PMSunday, September 23, 2012
By deciding to present in one evening three grueling Tennessee Williams one-acts--27 Wagons Full of Cotton, Hello From Bertha, and This Property Is Condemned--director Ken Schatz has set a m…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:44AMWednesday, September 19, 2012
Sean McIntyre, Adam Lebowitz-Lockard Photo: Hunter CanningThe story of Job in the bible is one of the weirder episodes in a book full of weird episodes, and in The Flea Theater's produc…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:18PMMonday, September 10, 2012
Janie Brookshire, Roderick HillPhoto: Carol Rosegg1911. The upper-crust Timbrells gather in the drawing room to discuss the wedding of Edgar, the oldest brother, to his beloved Sheila. As al…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PMSunday, September 9, 2012
You walk into the theatre carefully, skirting the floor-level stage, which is covered with gorgeous patterned silks and parasols and glittering chains of reflective circles. You take your se…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PM 
