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 10:57AMMonday, 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 03:13PMSunday, 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 07:32AMMonday, 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 fe…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:00PMMonday, 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 enj…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:50AMThursday, 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 04:58PMSunday, 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 10:00PMWednesday, 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 05:42PMTuesday, 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 12:22PMMonday, 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 08:38AMMonday, 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 11:14AMMonday, 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 08:47AMTuesday, 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 03:15PMMonday, 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 07:55AMSaturday, 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 01:05PMWednesday, 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 01:23PMMonday, 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 08:35AMSunday, 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 07:03PMWednesday, 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, he's …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:57PMFriday, 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 11:53AMThursday, November 20, 2014
Unique questions arise when presenting differently-bodied characters in theatrical productions. Should one be painstakingly literal--either out of respect, or to offer the audience a chance …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00AMWednesday, November 12, 2014
A classic boulevard comedy is back on Broadway. The side-splitting laughter that rings through the auditorium is fairly deafening. No, I’m not talking about the acclaimed revival of Kaufma…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:06AMThursday, October 30, 2014
photo: Monique Carboni I wasn't around forty-three years ago, when David Rabe's Sticks and Bones premiered at Joseph Papp's Public Theater, the second work in his trio of plays abo…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:40AMFriday, October 24, 2014
photo: Joan Marcus The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard’s popular romantic comedy (if it can be called that), is back on Broadway in a starry revival from the Roundabout Theatre Company. This…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:59PMSaturday, October 18, 2014
Terrence McNally’s Lips Together, Teeth Apart was written at the height of the AIDS epidemic, and premiered Off-Broadway in 1991. The original production—which starred Nathan Lane, Swoos…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:14PMThursday, October 16, 2014
Tenzin is three years old. He lives in what is described as "an American city with a large Tibetan community." His Mother (Celia Keenan-Bolger) is a white American academic, whose literary s…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:34AMThursday, October 9, 2014
Photo: Brinkhoff/Moegenburg The only aspect of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time about which I am curious is what the appeal of this show is to so many people. Adapted by Sim…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:18PMMonday, October 6, 2014
Disgraced, Ayad Ahktar’s Pulitzer-winning powder keg of a play, is finally making its Main Stem debut. Produced once again by Lincoln Center, it has arrived at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:55AMSaturday, October 4, 2014
It should come as no surprise that Lady Parts, the recently released memoir from Broadway favorite Andrea Martin, is often hysterically funny. Along with Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, an…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:46PMSaturday, September 27, 2014
Billy Porter, the talented, Tony-winning star of Kinky Boots, makes his playwriting debut with the autobiographical drama While I Yet Live. The production, directed by Sheryl Kaller and pres…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:21PMThursday, September 25, 2014
A new Broadway revival of On the Town began previews over the weekend at the oft-renamed Lyric (nee Foxwoods, nee Hilton, nee Ford) Theatre. There were no survivors.This is not going to be a…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:47AM 
