All articles from theaterlife
By Alix Cohen
April 19, 2026: Since 2018, Stephen Hanks, at various times editor, writer, publisher, reviewer, publicity agent, vocalist; always a dedicated political activist, has produced…
By David Sheward
April 18, 2026: The fear of the number 13 is triskaidekaphobia. But you wouldn't learn that from Lindsey Ferrentino's play The Fear of 13 now at the James Earl Jones after …
By Isa Goldberg
April 17, 2026: New York City 1975, oh what a time! The city was bankrupt, federal aid and social services were dismantled, crime stepped up, and so did despair. Accordingly…
By Paulanne Simmons
April 13, 2026: Billie Dawson's mamma has died, and she's headed back home to close up the house where she was born and raised. Memories surround her, but it isn't until…
By Samuel L. Leiter
April 14, 2026: Congratulations to the New Group on its move to a permanent home at the Theatre at St. Clements. Its first production there, however, director Scott Elli…
By Alix Cohen
April 14, 2026: Charlotte Moore and Ciarán O'Reilly concocted Irish Repertory Theatre picturesquely chatting at a kitchen table, rather like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney,…
By David Sheward
April 14, 2026: "This is where the story gets kooky crazy," announces Marla Mindelle as a kooky crazy version of Canadian songstress and power-ballad queen Celine Dion half…
By Isa Goldberg
April 13, 2026: A spectacle of and about our time, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, sets an exciting new bar in theatrical artistry. Its subject -- people who fashion themselves, cr…
By Samuel L. Leiter
April 12, 2026: Four years ago, when I saw Titanique in an intimate, subterranean, club-like theatre in Chelsea, it reminded me of an earlier show, 2013's magnificently …
By Alix Cohen
April 12, 2026: Donna McKechnie explodes onto the stage, arms shooting out like fireworks. "Everything's Coming Up Roses" (Jule Styne/Stephen Sondheim), usually a finale, is h…
JESSE TYLER FERGUSON STARS IN A MISGUIDED REVIVAL OF TRU, JAY PRESSON ALLEN'S CHARACTER STUDY OF TRUMAN CAPOTE AT A PIVOTAL MOMENT IN HIS LIFE.
By Patrick Christiano    Â
A…
By: Ellis NassourÂ
April 9, 2021:Â Cats: The Jellicle Ball, the rip-roaring reimagination of Andrew Lloyd Webber and T.S. Eliot's classic score, inspired by the latter's Old Possum's B…
By David Sheward
April 10, 2026: The most fascinating element of Joe Mantello's innovative and powerful production of Death of a Salesman, is the deceptively simple set by Chloe Lamford. Wh…
By Paulanne Simmons
April 8, 2026: The latest offering in Kaufman Music Center's Artist as Curator series put together choreographer and former New York City Ballet principal ballerina Laur…
Shake It Up featuring David Bender, Suzanne Metz, Paul D. Fuentes, Kat O'Neill, and Kasia G on view at The White Room Gallery April 10 " May 10, 2026.
April 8, 2026: The White Room Gallery,…
By Alix Cohen
April 5, 2026: Based on a botched 1972 Brooklyn robbery and its subsequent film depiction, this iteration of Dog Day Afternoon has lost its axis. That the playwright was event…
By Isa Goldberg
April 4, 2026: Like a quintessential Broadway magician, a Houdini in fact, Daniel Radcliffe breaks the shackles of constraint in Every Brilliant Thing.
In this interact…
By Samuel L. Leiter
April 2, 2026: Stage 42, a 499-seat Off-Broadway theatre, would classify as Broadway if it had one more seat. Gotta Dance!, its engaging new tenant, is a bit shy of Broa…
By David Sheward
April 1, 2026: Two new Broadway plays are set in the last decades of the 20th century and based on real events. Both are startlingly relevant, foretelling fissures and frac…
By Paulanne Simmons
April 1, 2026: We all know (or should know) that children's author Roald Dahl was an antisemite. But before seeing Mark Rosenblatt's Giant, recently transferred to Broad…
By David Sheward
March 27, 2026: Though Julissa Reynoso and Michael J. Chepiga's Public Charge (fittingly at the Public Theater) takes place only a few years ago, this fast-paced docu-play …
By Jesse Ayala
March 24, 2026: Since 1997, the Jonathan Larson Grants have been awarded to promising musical theater composers, lyricists, librettists, and writing teams, continuing Jonath…
By David Sheward
March 24, 2026: Wallace Shawn continues to explore themes of morality and familial influence with his latest work What We Did Before Our Moth Days, a series of interrelated…
By Iris Wiener
March 24, 2026: The lights dim, the music kicks in, and suddenly you're not just watching a show"you're rooting for a group of ordinary people finding courage in the most une…
By David Sheward
March 21, 2026: That distinctly weird, transitional decade, the 1980s, provides the time frame for two wildly funny Off-Broadway productions. This was a time when America w…
By Samuel L. Leiter
March 18, 2026: In December 2014, a little more than eleven years ago, I saw the Off-Broadway production of the solo play Every Brilliant Thing at the Barrow Street Thea…
By David Sheward
March 16, 2026: The Daniel Radcliffe vehicle Every Brilliant Thing, currently at the Hudson after a transfer from London, is ostensibly a solo show. The former Harry Potter…
By Alix CohenÂ
March 16,2026: The work of Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire is a masterclass in wit, melody, and storytelling. Maltby's lyrics sparkle with intelligence and emotional p…
By David Sheward
March 12, 2026: There have been numerous attempts at updating Greek tragedy. This season alone the tale of Oedipus has seen a new modern version from Robert Icke and a revi…
By Samuel L. Leiter
March 12, 2026: You can't say that Bughouse, a mostly solo play (there are offstage voices) about an "outsider" artist, with direction by Martha Clarke, script by Be…
By Iris Wiener
March 9, 2026: New York City Center's Bigfoot! is a delightfully quirky theatrical experience that embraces its offbeat premise with humor, heart, and an infectious sense of …
By Samuel L. Leiter
March 8, 2026: The Mint Theatre has once again reached into the candy jar of forgotten or neglected plays, often from the UK. This time it's plucked a British play writt…
By Isa Goldberg
March 5, 2026: Brain health. It's much more than a contemporary idea, and it triumphs here, in Jake Brasch's The Reservoir at The Atlantic Theater. Â
One might think br…
By Paulanne Simmons
March 5, 2026: Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is a legendary apelike creature that has its origins in the Indigenous folklore of the Pacific Northwest. But he didn't …
YOUR KIND OF CAMP?
By Alix Cohen
March 2, 2026. Camp (idiomatic/aesthetic sense) refers to a style or sensibility that embraces exaggeration, theatricality, artificiality, and deliberate …
UNITED AGAINST BIAS, DIVIDED BY POWER
By Alix Cohen
February 27, 2026: Prejudice against Chinese women in corporate America often operates at the intersection of race and gender, where st…
By Ellis Nassour
February 24, 2026: Grammy winner and a seven-time Grammy nominee Debby Boone, quite celebrated as a multiple cross-over artist with Top 10 successes in pop, contemporary, a…
By Samuel L. Leiter
February 23, 2026: Mother Russia, Lauren Yee's satiric fantasia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, arrives at Signature Theatre with an ambition that is at…
By Samuel L. Leiter
February 21, 2026: Ngozi Anyanwu's The Monsters, a Manhattan Theatre Club production at NY City Center Stage II, is one of those rare evenings in the theater when you fe…
Wild Things featuring Markus Klinko, Stephen Hall, and Mital Patel on view at The White Room Gallery March 6 - April 12, 2026.
February 20, 2026: The White Room Gallery, 3 Railroad Avenue, …
By Ellis Nassour
February 19, 2026: Step inside 148th edition of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey's next iteration of The Greatest Show On Earth and, though it may not hit or shock yo…
By David Sheward
February 17, 2026: Jacob Perkins' The Dinosaurs at Playwrights Horizons starts out like a straightforward depiction of a weekly support group modeled on Alcoholics Anonymou…
By Samuel L Leiter
February 16, 2026: Jacob Perkins's The Dinosaurs, now receiving its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons, belongs to the category we might call the "group therapy play.…
By Paulanne Simmons
February 16, 2026: If you like plays with a lot of physical action, easy humor and obvious pathos, don't miss The Monsters, a two-hander written and directed by Ngozi An…
By Alix Cohen
February 14, 2026: Jeff Harnar's last two shows/CDs set an extraordinarily high bar. Tonight, with the recreation of his first 1987 appearance at Don't Tell Mama, he and colla…
By Isa Goldberg
February 12, 2026: It's Intriguing to me to read women writers on boxing and wrestling -- sports so demonstrably masculine, they would seem out of reach. However, a writer k…
By David Sheward
February 12, 2026: The two-actor cast of Ngozi Anyanwu's The Monsters at the intimate Stage II at City Center in a Manhattan Theater Club production, go through quite a wor…
By Ellis NassourÂ
February 11, 2026: Tony, Emmy, and Grammy nominee and former Miss America Vanessa Williams, fresh from her West End debut in the dazzling musical The Devil Wears Pr…
By David Sheward
February 7, 2026: In a program interview, director-choreographer Danny Mefford reveals he never saw The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee before taking on its first-ev…
By Samuel L. Leiter
February 5, 2026: Erika Schmidt's disappointing The Disappear, now at Off Broadway's Minetta Lane Theatre, is a drawing-room comedy of manners whose surface polish invit…
