Thursday, January 5, 2023
By JK Clarke . . . Great Expectations is one of those great novels most of us encountered in a sturdy high school English curriculum. Riveting and multi-layered with a multitude of conflic…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 06:28AMMonday, January 2, 2023
By Walter Murphy . . . Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore debuted in 1878 during England’s Victorian era. One could choose to study the decline of the empire since that…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 05:07PMMonday, November 21, 2022
By Walter Murphy . . . Imagine a teenage playwright beginning his career by addressing the sacrifices an accomplished woman must make when she weds a less-talented partner. Add societal ex…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 07:00PMSunday, November 20, 2022
By Carole Di Tosti . . . Life is about second chances. So believes Juliet Capulet, the once tragic female protagonist of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, who steps out of 14th cen…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 10:27PMBy Marilyn Lester . . . Every so often all the parts of a show might just come together in a beautifully optimal way. Such was the case with Judi Mark’s Merely Marvelous—The Songs Of G…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 09:15PMFriday, November 18, 2022
By Ron Fassler . . . The first rule of musical theater is that in creating a show one must have a story that keeps an audience’s attention. With that said, it’s sad to report that even…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 04:04AMThursday, November 17, 2022
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . The quirkily charming new Broadway musical Kimberly Akimbo, at the Booth Theatre, brings to mind a small number of similarly inclined, small-bore, bighearted show…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 07:30AMWednesday, November 16, 2022
By Ron Fassler . . . If the title of Will Arbery’s new comedy-drama from the New Group sounds confusing, just put the emphasis on “climbing” and say it aloud as if it were a newspape…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 08:00PMTuesday, November 15, 2022
By Carol Rocamora . . . The story of summer love holds sweet promise in the theater, don’t you agree? But not in the case of a certain summer, in a certain time and place . . . Playwri…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 09:59PMBy Carole Di Tosti . . . How far back can you trace your lineage? For Madeline Sayet, Native American theater-maker and lover of Shakespeare, the challenge of understanding her identity as…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 11:45AMby Cooper Lawrence . . . If you were wondering where your favorite Broadway stars are hiding out on Monday nights when their shows are dark, well last night November 14, they were at the mos…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 09:13AMMonday, November 14, 2022
By Ron Fassler . . . The husband and wife team of John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey have returned to the Café Carlyle for a two week engagement that is as warm and inviting as sitting by…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 10:46AMBy Ron Fassler . . . Peter Fogel is a throwback to a time when you could watch a comedian like him on The Ed Sullivan Show, the CBS Sunday night variety series that ran from 1948 to 1971. Fa…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 09:30AMBy JK Clarke . . . Ask any working comic and they’ll tell you that the standup comedy business is more difficult now than it has been in over fifty years. Not since organized crime figur…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 04:30AMFriday, November 11, 2022
By Ron Fassler . . . No, the headline is not hyperbole. There were approximately 150 witnesses to the opening night performance of Leslie Uggams’ weekend run of shows at 54 Below on Thur…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 04:26PMBy Samuel L. Leiter . . . Once again this season, a writer with a gift for language has crafted a play that is essentially a work of literature, gussied up for the stage with creative desi…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 01:59PMThursday, November 10, 2022
A mélange of melody and tour de force performances featuring lyrics by Michael Colby, will be presented as part of Urban Stages 2022 “Winter Rhythms” series, produced by Tom Toce and Su…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 10:25AMBy Myra Chanin . . . The Thin Place is the charmingly chilling play by Lucas Hnath that deals with a provocative issue of mortality: whether there actually is an existence beyond death and, …
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 05:13AMWednesday, November 9, 2022
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . The availability on streaming and cable of so many popular mainstream movies of the past is tempting for theater reviewers about to see a show based on one of the…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 08:00AMMonday, November 7, 2022
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . Probably no other New York stage director has as recognizable a style as John Doyle (The Color Purple), who has been regularly demonstrating it at the Classic Sta…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 07:30AMSunday, November 6, 2022
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . Judging by the last three shows I saw, dialogue drama, like democracy and the economy, is in serious trouble. After seeing the one-hander Albert Camus’ The Fall…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 07:30PMBy Samuel L. Leiter . . . You Will Get Sick, Noah Diaz’s frequently puzzling new play at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre, may have the most off-putting title around, but its conten…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 04:00PMMonday, October 31, 2022
By JK Clarke . . . Sometimes when you walk into a theater for a show you know little to nothing about, you hope it’s going to be simple and straightforward, with no contrivances or exces…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 06:43AMSunday, October 30, 2022
By JK Clarke . . . Bedlam, one of New York’s most creative and innovative theater companies, has been at it for ten years now. Bursting out of the gate that first year (2012) with outstand…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 03:30AMSaturday, October 29, 2022
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . In 1956, a year before he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Albert Camus, the Algerian-born French writer famous for his philosophical novels The Stranger and The…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 06:18AMThursday, October 27, 2022
By Myra Chanin . . . If you, like me, are a first-generation American-born child of Russian immigrants who suffered greatly in the Bad Old Country before arriving in The Golden Land, then …
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 03:26AMMonday, October 24, 2022
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . Turkey, the fowl, appears in dozens of plays, especially those set on or around Thanksgiving; but Turkey the country is a rarity on the American stage. HOUND DOG …
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 07:30PMSunday, October 23, 2022
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . With Chushingura—47 Ronin, Ako Dachs, a respected New York actress born and bred in Japan (where she was a Takarazuka member!) has undertaken a unique but aweso…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 11:08PMBy Carole Di Tosti . . . Cine-memoir is difficult to approach, but with acute sensitivity writer-director James Gray (The Lost City of Z) does a yeoman’s job tackling his most personal f…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 10:14PMThursday, October 20, 2022
By Ron Fassler . . . If you like puns (such as the title of this show, Villain: DeBlanks), a pre-Halloween Trick and Treat was had by one and all this past Tuesday evening in the cabaret spa…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 01:50PMSaturday, October 15, 2022
By Ron Fassler . . . In the excellent one-person show, Everything’s Fine, now playing at the DR2 Theatre, Douglas McGrath portrays himself. An Academy Award-nominated screenwriter (Bulle…
SOURCE: Theater Pizzazz at 07:01AM 
