Saturday, August 20, 2011
I haven't the foggiest idea of what author-actor Peter Welch thinks he's up to with this two-hander, but as Noël Coward once sang, 90 minutes is a long, long time.
SOURCE: Backstage at 12:00PMFriday, August 19, 2011
Playwright Danny Mitarotondo's theater is a lyrical one of splintered poetry and inchoate longing that seems most interested in essences, but they're not jelling as successfully as they co…
SOURCE: Backstage at 11:40AMWith this heartfelt epistolary comedy-drama about two very different men who have been best friends since childhood, writer Kevin Cochran has given us a gay "Love Letters."
SOURCE: Backstage at 04:11AMThursday, August 18, 2011
The highly sexual photo with which Elixir Productions Theatre Company sells this gay-themed noir drama proves more tease than promise thanks to Alex DeFazio's synthetic script.
SOURCE: Backstage at 10:12AMAcutely observed, inventively structured, and acted impeccably under the nuanced direction of Craig Baldwin, Cory Conley's new play is, in a word, terrific.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:32AMWednesday, August 17, 2011
Though Juha Jokela's two-hander about religious fundamentalism comes with the imprimatur of the 2008 Nordic Drama Award for best play, what's on stage at the IATI Theater is definitely a m…
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:25AMIn the wake of Stephen Sondheim's letter to The New York Times questioning the rewrites being done to "Porgy and Bess," playwright-director Leah Maddie has a tiger by the tail.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:23AMI'm afraid you'll have to look far and wide to find a musical more inept than this 1920s satire being given a manic, never-met-a-cliché-it-didn't-like production by director-choreogra…
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:21AMTuesday, August 16, 2011
Charles Busch's commercially minded comedy is an obvious attempt to duplicate the box office success of his "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife," but lightning is unlikely to strike twice.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:00AMMonday, August 15, 2011
There's nothing particularly wrong with Anna Kerrigan's slice-of-life, coming-of-age comedy-drama set in Oakland, Calif., in the summer of 1970, but there's nothing very distinctive about …
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:30AMAuthor-actor Brian Stanton's compelling one-man show about his search for his birth mother overcomes a few flaws to be a moving exploration of identity and a thought-provoking and challeng…
SOURCE: Backstage at 01:11AMIt's dispiriting to watch the talent and professionalism of Nosedive Productions' artists put to use in the service of something as shallow and glibly cynical as James Comtois' would-be bl…
SOURCE: Backstage at 01:08AMSunday, August 14, 2011
Paul David Young has written a deceptively quiet winner with his new one-hour one-act about three 20-something friends hallucinating possible futures on an alcohol- and LSD-fueled summer n…
SOURCE: Backstage at 10:52AMSaturday, August 13, 2011
Michael Ross Albert's preposterous, self-indulgent one-hour one-act purports to examine four former child geniuses reunited after years apart, but it sails off the proverbial cliff of credib…
SOURCE: Backstage at 04:02AMWriter-performer Jessica Sherr's naive one-woman play about Bette Davis is not remotely persuasive and unfortunately suffused with self-pity, an emotion Davis would have despised.
SOURCE: Backstage at 03:31AMTuesday, August 9, 2011
Strong singing and acting mitigate unfortunate attempts to modernize Noël Coward's 1929 operetta. Still, this is a welcome chance to hear the lovely score sung in dramatic context.
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:37AMWednesday, August 3, 2011
Tennessee Williams' centenary is being used as the pretext for trotting out this "long-buried" piece, an early sketch for "The Glass Menagerie," but it seems more an act of exploitation th…
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AMMonday, August 1, 2011
Director Lucy Bailey's full-volume approach to Shakespeare's tragedy tends to flatten it into melodrama, but one that hurtles forward with such speed that we're largely swept along with it.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:21AMMonday, July 25, 2011
David Farr's meticulous direction of the outstanding RSC ensemble somehow marries the stark drama and playful comedy of this problematic work in a compelling production.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:56AMSunday, July 24, 2011
In a virtuosic evening concerned with the creation of character, David Greenspan hilariously plays all the parts in a 1920s farce, then follows it with an intriguing monologue on his acting …
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:30AMThursday, July 21, 2011
A lack of dramatic action, underwritten characters, and an overwritten score combine to sink this musical fantasy from Broadway vets Maury Yeston, Thomas Meehan, and the late Peter Stone.
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AMWriter-performer Robert Chionis' sincere almost-one-man jukebox musical about a young gay boy from the sticks in NYC at the start of the AIDS epidemic is poorly scripted and awkwardly deli…
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58AMWednesday, July 20, 2011
"Gentlemen's agreement" is an archaic term that is nevertheless perfect for describing the unwritten contract between publications and theater producers known as the "review embargo."
SOURCE: Backstage at 01:38AMTuesday, July 19, 2011
Playwright Jon Marans' new play about the mixture of Orthodox Judaism and homosexuality exudes a tantalizing promise but has yet to marry its concerns with fully realized characters.
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AMDan Fingerman's adeptness at characterization and fine ear for contemporary speech sufficiently mitigate his naive plot and structure.
SOURCE: Backstage at 04:58AMMonday, July 18, 2011
The Royal Shakespeare Company is not offering the high-wire act of an Olivier but a thoroughly compelling ensemble rendition of this bleak tragedy in which the play's the thing.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:39AMMonday, July 11, 2011
Kara Lee Corthron may be a promising playwright, but this ambitious two-and-a-half-hour work is too tonally erratic and in desperate need of a disciplined dramaturge.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:48AMThursday, July 7, 2011
A hit in Washington D.C.'s 2010 Terrence McNally festival, this production arrives on Broadway in new and improved shape, with Tyne Daly delivering stage magic as opera diva Maria Callas.
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AMThursday, June 30, 2011
This brand-new professional company is a bit ahead of itself attempting James Baldwin's complex 1964 drama about race in America, but it deserves points for the attempt.
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:14AMWednesday, June 29, 2011
Andrew Frank and Doug Silver's delightful musical salute to Greenwich Village's history and denizens is a refreshing breeze of a show—tuneful, literate, sassy, and sharp.
SOURCE: Backstage at 02:33AMThursday, June 23, 2011
The second powerful play in a year to tell the story of a horrifying 1920 purge of gay students at Harvard, the Plastic Theatre's communally written show is a triumph.
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AM 
