Sunday, May 6, 2012
This 92nd Street Y Lyrics & Lyricists series look at Noël Coward and Cole Porter is undercooked, faring best when Edward Hibbert and Harriet Harris perform.
SOURCE: Backstage at 04:35AMSaturday, May 5, 2012
An electric surge of passionate commitment courses through the ReGroup Theatre's production of Robert Ardrey's 1939 anti-war fantasy "Thunder Rock."
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:19AMThursday, May 3, 2012
“Something for the Boys,” Cole Porter’s 1943 vehicle for Ethel Merman, is as slapdash as they come, but Musicals Tonight! makes it entertaining anyway.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:45AMTuesday, May 1, 2012
This tribute to the great Ethel Waters, with Michael Feinstein, Adriane Lenox, Tracie Thoms, and Catherine Russell, from Jazz at Lincoln Center, is a honey.
SOURCE: Backstage at 11:54AMMonday, April 30, 2012
David Rabe’s “An Early History of Fire,” at the New Group, looks at the complacency of early 1960s America with a knowing eye but meandering dramaturgy.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:00AMSunday, April 29, 2012
The remarkable Metropolitan Playhouse and talented director Alex Roe are having an off day with Clyde Fitch and Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth."
SOURCE: Backstage at 11:25AMKurt Peterson and Victoria Mallory, Broadway's go-to ingenues 40 years ago and once a couple, reunite at City Center in a wonderful "concert with comments."
SOURCE: Backstage at 11:18AMThursday, April 26, 2012
Under Christopher Ashley's desperately meta direction and bathed in Alan Menken and Glenn Slater's generic score, "Leap of Faith" needs its own miracle.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:15AMWednesday, April 25, 2012
David Auburn’s “The Columnist,” from Manhattan Theatre Club, offers a fascinating portrait of political writer Joseph Alsop. Star John Lithgow is riveting.
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AMSunday, April 22, 2012
Helmer Emily Mann and stars Nicole Ari Parker and Blair Underwood treat Tennessee Williams' masterwork as soap opera and sitcom, with embarrassing results.
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:56AMThursday, April 19, 2012
"Clybourne Park," Bruce Norris' era-spanning satire on race, comes to Broadway with its original cast intact and a Pulitzer Prize, but it's still weak tea.
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AMMonday, April 16, 2012
Unfinished at his death, Tennessee Williams' "In Masks Outrageous and Austere" gets a fevered multimedia production starring a memorable Shirley Knight.
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AMMonday, April 2, 2012
Amy Herzog’s “4000 Miles,” now at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater after debuting last June at the Duke on 42nd Street, is a quiet triumph.
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AMSunday, April 1, 2012
In Michael Wilson's crackling take on "Gore Vidal's The Best Man," Eric McCormack, John Larroquette, James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, and more are tops.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:11AMThursday, March 29, 2012
Disney’s stage version of its 1992 flop musical, “Newsies,” despite a few flaws, is a galvanizing hit, with a star-making performance from Jeremy Jordan and catchy Alan M…
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:00AMRodgers and Hammerstein’s 1955 musical flop, “Pipe Dream,” gets a bang-up Encores! presentation, starring Leslie Uggams, that highlights its lovely and engagingly quirky …
SOURCE: Backstage at 01:55AMTuesday, March 27, 2012
Matt Charman’s gerrymandered drama-with-a-big-secret, “Regrets,” from Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center, is a bad end to a lousy season for the company.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:00AMMonday, March 26, 2012
The New York Philharmonic's one-night salute to songwriter Frank Loesser, featuring a starry cast including Bryn Terfel and Victoria Clark, is sensational.
SOURCE: Backstage at 11:56AMThursday, March 22, 2012
Neil Simon’s Pulitzer and Tony winner, “Lost in Yonkers,” holds up nicely after 20 years, even in director Jenn Thompson’s underpowered production for TACT.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:30AMWednesday, March 21, 2012
With “The Big Meal,” at Playwrights Horizons, Dan LeFranc has written the kind of play that every critic hopes to encounter whenever a curtain rises. Go.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:42AMSaturday, March 17, 2012
The gallant Jen Danby is giving a persuasive account of English star Vivien Leigh against greater odds than a more generous universe would have allowed.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:13AMThursday, March 15, 2012
Director Mike Nichols makes a serious casting error in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” constricting Philip Seymour Hoffman’s thoughtful Willy Loman.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:00AMTuesday, March 13, 2012
Metropolitan Playhouse's production of Arnaud d'Usseau and James Gow's hit 1945 drama about racial bigotry, "Deep Are the Roots," is a corker.
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:33AMSunday, March 11, 2012
Tennessee Williams' 1969 one-act drama "In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel" is in good hands in actor-directors Charles Schick and Regina Bartkoff's production.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:10AMMonday, March 5, 2012
Signature Theatre has rescued Edward Albee's once-dismissed "The Lady From Dubuque." Starring Jane Alexander, it's a sure and stunning blow to the heart.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:30AMSunday, March 4, 2012
UnsungMusicalsCo.'s attempt to resuscitate Richard Lewine and Arnold B. Horwitt's 1948 hit musical revue, "Make Mine Manhattan," is at best painless.
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:05AMWhat a pleasure to encounter Nina Raine's distinctive comedy-drama "Tribes," directed authoritatively by David Cromer, at the cozy Barrow Street Theatre.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:55AMThursday, March 1, 2012
MCC Theater's reworking of the infamous flop Broadway musical version of Stephen King's "Carrie" recoils too far from the original over-the-top production.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:00AMMonday, February 27, 2012
Mint Theater Company is doing a bang-up job with Githa Sowerby's flinty 1912 drama "Rutherford & Son," which is notable for its feminist perspective.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:26AMThursday, February 16, 2012
Colman Domingo and Scott Shepard give superb performances in Athol Fugard's "Blood Knot" at Signature Theatre's new Frank Gehry–designed Pershing Center.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:53AMWednesday, February 15, 2012
Gabe McKinley's thinly veiled fictionalization of the 2003 Jayson Blair journalism scandal rarely dips beneath the surface, playing more like an extended TV-drama episode than a thoughtful…
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:50AM 
