Friday, June 23, 2017
The stage version of George Orwell's 1984, grippingly adapted by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan, might not be the masterpiece the book is, but it's pretty damned good just the same. I…
Linked From Show Showdown at 01:54AMFriday, June 9, 2017
We're cutting it a little close on the Tony forecast this year, but can you blame us? We've all been super busy reading the news, watching hearings, and calling our representatives all the t…
Linked From Show Showdown at 01:04AMFriday, June 2, 2017
On her website, Alison S.M. Kobayashi describes herself as an identity contortionist. This is, as it turns out, a pretty accurate description for the highly interdisciplinary work she does, …
Linked From Show Showdown at 12:36PMSunday, May 14, 2017
AnastasiaTime was when a middle-of-the-road, slightly overstuffed show like Anastasia would have sent me into paroxysms of self-righteous outrage, but I'm older, wiser, wearier, and maybe a …
Linked From Show Showdown at 06:54PMWednesday, April 26, 2017
Spring in these parts means fluctuating temperatures, the hectic and drawn-out end of the semester, more theater than I know what to do with, and very little time. What is a theater-loving, …
Linked From Show Showdown at 09:02PMSaturday, April 1, 2017
Hi, Show Showdown visitors!My take on the highly unconventional and mildly controversial Sam Gold production of The Glass Menagerie is currently featured on Broken and Woken, the blog a…
Linked From Show Showdown at 01:24PMMonday, March 20, 2017
Kneehigh's stage adaptation of the 2006 children's novel The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips by Michael Morpurgo is so bubbly, energetic, and wacky that a few times during the perfo…
Linked From Show Showdown at 02:42PMMonday, February 27, 2017
The man in the pajama bottoms, slippers and suit jacket is terribly confused but always polite to the crowd he is somehow suddenly responsible for entertaining. He has snacks and juice stash…
Linked From Show Showdown at 11:42PMTuesday, February 21, 2017
Hey, have you wanted nothing other than to listen to me, director John Rando, and producer Jack Viertel talk about sex and musicals in a very nice performance space in lower Manhattan? Well,…
Linked From Show Showdown at 09:32PMMonday, January 2, 2017
Dear Evan Hansen is an intimate, well-crafted, well-performed musical, the kind that tidily trashes the generalized dismissal of musical theater as an emotionally overwrought genre filled wi…
Linked From Show Showdown at 04:42PMThursday, December 22, 2016
In years as rough and depressing as 2016 has been, I am extra-super-duper thankful for the theater. I have no desire, after a year as harsh as this one was, to come up with a "worst" list--e…
Linked From Show Showdown at 06:42PMSunday, December 4, 2016
Joan MarcusJoan MarcusIn very dark times, I'm always telling my students, people crave the comfort-food version of mass entertainment: breezy movies, bubbly Broadway shows, silly TV sit-coms…
Linked From Show Showdown at 05:31PMFriday, November 25, 2016
The great comet in question was actually in 1811. Just sayin'. Not like it matters: Broadway musicals are hardly the medium through which accurate historical information gets passed along to…
Linked From Show Showdown at 01:31PMSunday, November 6, 2016
School of Rock is charming and engaging and the kind of big, shiny Broadway musical you could totally bring your kids or your friends from out of town to. It's basically a stage renditi…
Linked From Show Showdown at 05:36PMMonday, October 31, 2016
Every so often, especially when you don't get too close or take them too seriously, selfish people can be enormously entertaining company. In Love, Love, Love, Mike Bartlett's short, lacerat…
Linked From Show Showdown at 02:42AMTuesday, October 4, 2016
In Richard Nelson's Hungry, which ran at the Public last spring, the Gabriel family of Rhinebeck, New York, had just finished scattering the ashes of their brother / husband / ex-h…
Linked From Show Showdown at 05:56PMWednesday, August 3, 2016
Small Mouth Sounds, a play by Bess Wohl currently being restaged at the Signature Theater after an initial run at Ars Nova last year, is sweet and diverting, if not as deft or probing as it …
Linked From Show Showdown at 04:14PMSunday, July 10, 2016
Have you ever not completely connected with a show when you first sat through it, only to fall head over heels in love with it in retrospect? It's happened to me on only a few occasions that…
Linked From Show Showdown at 08:30PMThursday, June 30, 2016
It's not atypical for me to see more than one play or musical over the course of the week, but it is rare that I see two shows back-to-back that are as different as Long Day's Journey Into N…
Linked From Show Showdown at 06:07PMTuesday, June 7, 2016
If you are a reader of this blog, then we probably don't have to tell you that early June means the annual Tony awards. Even if you are not a reader of this blog, we also probably don't have…
Linked From Show Showdown at 10:16AMTuesday, May 31, 2016
The Father, Florian Zeller's very good play (in very good translation by Christopher Hampton) is worth seeing both for the tricks it plays on the audience and for Frank Langella's rivet…
Linked From Show Showdown at 01:45AMSaturday, May 14, 2016
The...um....reconception? reconstruction? reconsideration?...of the 1921 hit show Shuffle Along, currently at the Music Box Theater (which, by the way, also opened in 1921), has some of the …
Linked From Show Showdown at 08:38PMWednesday, May 4, 2016
From April 2015 to March 2016, I served as a judge on the Lortel Awards, which recognize excellence in the Off Broadway theater. The term was a little daunting--I was told to expect (and ult…
Linked From Show Showdown at 05:48PMFriday, April 15, 2016
It's been a hellishly busy couple of weeks, but I've managed to see a few shows nonetheless. In the interest of time, I'll spare you my typically long-winded reviews in favor of terser…
Linked From Show Showdown at 05:48PMWednesday, March 30, 2016
2016 LUCILLE LORTEL AWARDS NOMINATIONSOutstanding PlayThe ChristiansProduced by Playwrights Horizons and Center Theatre GroupWritten by Lucas HnathEclipsedProduced by The Public TheaterWritt…
Linked From Show Showdown at 11:50PMWednesday, March 23, 2016
The Gabriel family of Rhinebeck, New York, has just finished scattering the ashes of Thomas, one of its men, on the shores of the Hudson. Now that the simple ceremony has ended, they have re…
Linked From Show Showdown at 09:26PMFriday, March 11, 2016
A few seats were empty in the Mitzi Newhouse Theater the evening I saw Marco Ramirez's The Royale, and that struck me as kind of a bummer, because man, oh man, The Royale is a play…
Linked From Show Showdown at 06:09PMMonday, February 29, 2016
It's easy to assume--especially in diverse, concentrated and comparatively liberal areas--that at this point in our country's history, coming out of the closet is just no longer a very big d…
Linked From Show Showdown at 09:39PMSunday, February 14, 2016
Disaster! totally isn't one. Sure, it could maybe be shorter by about fifteen minutes, and maybe a little sharper in spots, but I saw it during the third preview and it was already pretty da…
Linked From Show Showdown at 09:38PMTuesday, 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…
Linked From 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…
Linked From Show Showdown at 11:32PM 
