Thursday, May 25, 2017
It's called Building the Wall, and yes, the wall referred to is That Wall.
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:18AMMonday, May 25, 2015
Myriad are the pop-culture references in "Shine: A Burlesque Musical." How do you make them hold together? You don't.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMThe downsizing of the workforce is one of the timeliest subjects around, but it's only given a light dusting over in "P.O.," Scott Klavan's two-hander about a pair of average-Joe postal work…
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMVince Santoro's one-man show plays like its raison d'être is that the author had a lot to get off his chest, and this was cheaper than therapy.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PM"I like you." "Why?" Not a deathless exchange, yet as rendered with multileveled subtext in Gregory Crafts' "Friends Like These," it pierces and resonates.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMPlaywright Tom MacLachlan knows stagecraft and has imagination, but he hasn't organized them into a coherent theatrical statement.
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMAnton Chekhov famously referred to his stage works as comedies, a characterization that may puzzle anyone who has ever sat through an uncut "Uncle Vanya."
SOURCE: Backstage at 05:58PMThis 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 03:19AM 
