Monday, May 21, 2018
Last weekend I saw a play about a man who lies about pretty much everything. Despite claiming to be a stand-up guy – ardently religious even – he’d con you out of your socks given half…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 06:01PMWednesday, May 16, 2018
[This article was written for Digital First Media’s Michigan newspapers, where it ran on Sunday May 13, with reviews to follow during the summer.] Ontario’s Stratford and Shaw Festiv…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:30PMMonday, May 7, 2018
Tennessee Williams’ women tend not to fare very well. Blanche Dubois is led away by kind strangers, and Amanda and Laura Wingate are stuck with each other after being twice abandoned. “S…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:25PMTuesday, April 24, 2018
Playwright Bran Friel has been called “the Irish Chekhov.” (Friel died in 2015 at 86.) Like the plays of that century-earlier Russian author, Friel’s are character-driven rather than…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 02:13PMThursday, April 19, 2018
When I commented to Holmdel Theatre Company’s “Much Ado About Nothing” producer that I did not recognize any cast names (except hers) from prior community productions, she explained …
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:31PMThursday, April 12, 2018
What do you look for in a musical? Songs and singers that make you glad you have ears? Multi-style choreography and dancers adept at every one of them? How ‘bout a plot that freezes your a…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 01:39PMTuesday, April 3, 2018
I am sitting in Jersey Mike’s eating a mini number seven sub when I hear that Stephanie “Stormy” Clifford is suing Donald “Grab ‘Em” Trump. That sentence is in the present tense,…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 02:23PMMonday, March 26, 2018
In order to enjoy a jukebox musical, it helps to be a fan of the songbook going in, but that’s no guarantee. ABBA-adoring fans kept “Mamma Mia” running for years on its easily replic…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:26PMMonday, March 19, 2018
Another fourth wall bites the dust in The New Group’s production of “Good for Otto,” at the Pershing Square Signature Center. David Rabe’s play, which premiered in 2015 at Chicago’…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 02:09PMTuesday, March 6, 2018
It takes more than memorization to put across a solo play (although that element should not be minimized). Those sometimes deceptively crowded affairs require the establishing of unique pers…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 05:36PMMonday, February 26, 2018
A Pulitzer Prize-winning piece by Thornton Wilder opens with no curtain, no scenery. Presently an actor enters and addresses the audience. He names the play and who wrote it. He sets the loc…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:45PMThursday, February 22, 2018
My exposure to the Jerry Springer Show has been limited to an occasional YouTube clip, but I’ve seen enough to know that the following topics are representative: “My mom used to be my da…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 09:58AMMonday, February 12, 2018
They’ve stormed the Reichstag, turned terrorism into absurd comedy and asked their audiences for answers. Meet five theatre-makers grappling with crises across the continent.By Daniel Boff…
Linked From The Guardian at 02:00AMMonday, February 5, 2018
As if we needed a reminder about the difference between governing and politicking, along comes “The Outsider,” running through February 18 at Paper Mill Playhouse. The wide chasm tha…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 12:52PMMonday, January 22, 2018
Here’s a list of those individuals who should see “A Chorus Line”: Anyone who has ever auditioned for a show or competed in any way for any job; anyone who has ever sung, danced and/or…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 05:36PMMonday, January 15, 2018
Write what you know, the saying goes. Playwright Matt Barbot and director José Zayas both credit their Hispanic heritage with having inspired their collaboration on “El Coquí Espectacula…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 10:42PMTuesday, January 9, 2018
Selected by NJPAC’s Stage Exchange as one of 30 plays by New Jersey playwrights to be produced at in-state venues, Monmouth University adjunct professor of playwriting Joel Stone’s “Th…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 05:12PMTuesday, January 2, 2018
It may be a tad unfair to begin a review of Ensemble for the Romantic Century’s serious play “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” by recalling the most irreverent take ever on Mary’s crea…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:52PMMonday, December 18, 2017
Re-visit with me, if you will, some of the comments I made in reviews of “Once On This Island” in Ocean Grove in 2004 (“…undistinguished, although pleasant enough”) and at Paper Mi…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 09:09PMThursday, December 7, 2017
I couldn’t find an English translation of Henry Becque’s 19th-Century farce La Parisienne, upon which Beau Willimon based “The Parisian Woman,” but it’s a safe assumption that the …
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 02:18PMTuesday, November 21, 2017
In a modern play about Oscar Wilde, he says “I have spent my life holding language up to the light, making words shimmer.” (Wilde might well have said that.) Then his 1895 play “The Im…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:11PMTuesday, November 14, 2017
An unscripted moment on opening night of Phoenix Productions’ “Seussical” revealed much about how the show was being received. Nearing the end, the Cat in the Hat addresses the audienc…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 05:27PMThursday, November 2, 2017
There’s a mind game we used to play in college built around someone finishing the sentence “Life is like a ___” with a concept (film noir, say) or item (a coke bottle is one I recall…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 08:49AMTuesday, October 24, 2017
We like to think we can size up strangers in a first meeting, but we really can’t. Everyone is guarded for a while, with deep feelings and values held in check, at least until the atmosphe…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 12:24AMMonday, October 16, 2017
Two things to know about George Street Playhouse’s temporary home on the Cook College Campus of Rutgers University: One is that the venue is temporary only in the sense that GSP will be mo…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:41PMFriday, September 29, 2017
There must be as many ways of creating the Forest of Arden onstage as there are productions of “As You Like It.” In director John Doyle’s minimalist production of Shakespeare’s roman…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 09:11PMMonday, September 18, 2017
There is little that I can add to the praise that has been heaped upon Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” virtually from the hour it opened on Broadway in 1959. Ms. Hansberry,…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:29PMFriday, September 1, 2017
“Prince of Broadway” has been variously compared to a highlight reel, a mix-tape and a best-of list. Simply stated, “Prince” is a compilation of musical numbers from sixteen of the t…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 05:07PMMonday, August 21, 2017
For starters, the F in “F Theory,” world-premiering at New Jersey Repertory Company, does not stand for what you are thinking. No; it represents friendship, in this case not even with be…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:33PMTuesday, August 15, 2017
Pinpointing a target audience for some shows is easy. Ten-to-twelve-year-old girls whose parents took them to “Annie” were seen a decade or so later with one another at “Rent,” while…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:25PMSunday, August 6, 2017
Settings and casting variations on Shakespeare are virtually infinite. “Othello” in an Army barracks? “Shrew” on a Dude Ranch? A female Prospero or even Richard III? A campy “Peric…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:36PM 
