Monday, May 25, 2015
This 90-minute show involving a time-altering drug feels twice as long. Kudos to Broadway vet Liz McCartney for bringing a note of reality to the fantasy.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PM1950s sensibilities clash with 2010 realities in a weird throwback to backstage musicals, but the three-person cast enchants.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMThis musical version of the fabled Horatio Algers books is hopelessly old-fashioned—but in a good way.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMDespite some juicy roles and histrionic scenes, this trio of interrelated one-acts fails to evoke any big emotions.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMApple Core Theatre Company's production of William M. Hoffman's 1985 play about the AIDS crisis may not be ideal, but it mostly hits the right notes and is genuinely moving.SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PM
Michael Roberts' high-energy, low-inspiration musical revue boasts a gifted company of four and enough decent yuks to get you past the sand traps.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMRadiohole's spoof of Douglas Sirk's film "All That Heaven Allows" plays like a bunch of kids putting on a show in their backyard and feels just a bit redundant.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMRick Crom's material is inconsistent, but a gifted quartet sells it with panache in this often funny topical revue.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMMatt Pelfrey's dramatization of novelist Clifford Chase's satire of all things current scores some salient points but undercuts itself by plunging too deeply into absurdity.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMWednesday, October 17, 2012
How am I going to stretch this out into a full review? There’s so little to say about “How to Be a New Yorker,” the nonmusical revue of New York facts, sketches, and stereo…
SOURCE: backstage.com at 08:00PMTuesday, August 14, 2012
"The Great Pie Robbery," Ben Tostado's send-up of 19th-century melodrama in the Fringe, feels belligerent rather than affectionate toward the genre.
SOURCE: Backstage at 03:17AMWednesday, August 1, 2012
Wendy Kesselman's "Spit" and James McLure's "Drive-in Dreams" have modest charms, but Nancy Giles' "The Accidental Pundette" standup routine is hilarious.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:15AMSunday, July 22, 2012
"Happily After Tonight," Mateo Moreno's fairy tale mash-up, is crowded with talent and imagination but also coarse, violent, and without purpose.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:11AMFriday, July 20, 2012
om Slot's serial-killer drama "Killing Time" is gory and gruesome, but its mild tone is that of a sitcom, and its victims' gallery is mostly good company.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:39AMSunday, June 10, 2012
The trouble with Radiotheatre's "The Naughty Victorians," now at the Kraine Theater, is the trouble with any carnal overdose: It's monotonous.
SOURCE: Backstage at 03:47AMWednesday, June 6, 2012
“Revisiting Wildfire,” Kari Floren’s two-hander about a long-term female friendship, is happily universal—and you get to hear Lynne Wintersteller sing.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:00AMTuesday, May 8, 2012
The Neo-Futurists "hip-hoperetta" "You Are in an Open Field," at Here Arts Center, puts the computer game Zork onto the stage.
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:03AMThursday, April 19, 2012
In Richard Caliban’s “MoM: A Rock Concert Musical,” at TBG Theater, suburban moms form a rock group and vent, but the show is more concert than musical.
SOURCE: Backstage at 08:00AMSaturday, March 3, 2012
"Marrying George Clooney," CAP21'S nonmusical revue based on Amy Ferris' eponymous book, doesn't even resonate strongly for its distaff target demographic.
SOURCE: Backstage at 09:29AMFriday, February 24, 2012
Theatre Arlo's "Man Saved by Condiments!" in Frigid New York marks the NYC playwriting debut of Mary Jo Pehl of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:39AMFriday, February 17, 2012
"DC-7: The Roberto Clemente Story," the new bio-musical at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre by Luis Caballero and Harold Gutiérrez, drops the ball.
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:09AMSunday, January 29, 2012
This Terrence McNally–Stephen Flaherty–Lynn Ahrens tuner still overindulges in sentimentality and noisy anti-Catholicism, but the Gallery Players certainly do a fine job with i…
SOURCE: Backstage at 07:33AMSaturday, January 28, 2012
Martin Dockery's two-hander about the dire consequences of fooling around is deliberately vague and cryptic, and on those terms it's pretty diverting, with fine chemistry between Dockery a…
SOURCE: Backstage at 04:55AMTuesday, January 24, 2012
Seth Rudetsky and Jack Plotnik's disaster-movie spoof wrapped in a '70s songbook is amusing in a cheap way and helped immeasurably by a large, gifted cast.
SOURCE: Backstage at 03:19AMSaturday, January 7, 2012
Ken Simon's adaptation of Evelyn Piper's novel is an awkward mix of incompatible media, a long evening even at a little more than an hour.
SOURCE: Backstage at 03:51AMSunday, December 11, 2011
A fun Summer of Love nostalgia fest and a labored metatheatrical present-day whimsy constitute Michael Weller's one-acts, which are sometimes amusing but always lightweight.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:13AMSunday, December 4, 2011
Kaufman and Hart's satire of celebrity and self-reinvention still amuses, but Jim Brochu's blustery Sheridan Whiteside doesn't reverberate as fully as one would like.
SOURCE: Backstage at 02:56AMWednesday, November 9, 2011
Milan Stitt's dimly remembered 1970s success is historical drama, courtroom nail-biter, whodunit, and religious meditation rolled into one, and Retro Productions mostly does it proud.
SOURCE: Backstage at 06:28AMSunday, November 6, 2011
Elaine Jackson's two-hander about white and black disaffected youth suffers from uneven and often unclear writing, but while Yasha Jackson struts the stage, you're riveted.
SOURCE: Backstage at 02:00AMWednesday, October 12, 2011
Tor Hyams' and Adam LeBow's musical about a reunion at a musical theater camp plays by the rules and does everything competently, but without excitement or individuality.
SOURCE: Backstage at 04:46AMMonday, October 10, 2011
T. Sivak and E. Gelman's riffing on a 1962 bad-movie classic is mostly bad puns and feeble joking, partly redeemed by well-crafted music and an excellent cast.
SOURCE: Backstage at 04:04AM 
