Sunday, July 23, 2017
In life there are the care-givers, the care-receivers, and those who simply don’t care. All three are represented in Scott McPherson’s “Marvin’s Room,” finally debuting on Broadway…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 05:22PMThursday, July 13, 2017
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is a degenerative disease found in people who have suffered repeated blows to the head. Symptoms, which manifest themselves eight-to-ten years later…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 09:18PMWednesday, July 5, 2017
William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw are the raisons d’être for the Stratford and Shaw Festivals in Ontario, where those venerated playwrights (and others) are staged by world-clas…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 09:16PMSunday, June 18, 2017
With the year nearly half spent, some random observations before leaving for Ontario to cover the Stratford and Shaw Festivals for Digital First Media newspapers in Michigan (and online) and…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:56PMMonday, June 12, 2017
Anyone who does not believe truth is stranger than fiction hasn’t been following the news lately…or has never heard about Joe Monaghan, whose story is encapsulated in the playbill of Two…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:49PMMonday, June 5, 2017
Some Broadway plays and musicals succeed or fail regardless of Tony Award consideration, but the fate of many more depends heavily on nominations, not even considering wins. Ticket sales for…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 06:27PMThursday, June 1, 2017
Part of my enjoyment of Red Bull Theater’s “The Government Inspector” derived from not knowing how accurately Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation translates Russian author Nikolai Gogol’s…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 10:00PMMonday, May 22, 2017
The set for “Ernest Shackleton Loves Me” features a metal-frame stand-up desk upon which set microphones, a tape deck, amps and speakers, various other electronic devices and, oh yes, a …
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:17PMMonday, May 8, 2017
There is an intriguing one-act, 80-minute play on the New Jersey Repertory stage. Unfolding in the fertile theatrical setting of higher-education academia, it deals with faculty jealousy, co…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:15PMTuesday, April 18, 2017
“The Women of Padilla” is a very well-written play, a realization I came to while reading it a couple days after seeing it at Two River Theater. If ever a play was suited for Two River…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 05:39PMMonday, April 17, 2017
Two-thirds of “The Play That Goes Wrong” is hilarious. The other half (apologies to Yogi Berra) is just funny. If you’ve ever appeared in a play, or produced, directed or stage-managed…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 02:04PMWednesday, April 12, 2017
Two-thirds of “The Play That Goes Wrong” is hilarious. The other half (apologies to Yogi Berra) is just funny. If you’ve ever appeared in a play, or produced, directed or stage-managed…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:51PMMonday, April 3, 2017
Some years ago I picked up a 1939 edition of John Gassner’s “20 Best Plays of the American Theatre” at the Cincinnati Public Library’s Buck-a-Book sale. Among the titles are some tha…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:11PMFriday, March 31, 2017
“Miss Saigon” was the first play I reviewed for the Two River Times in Red Bank, NJ – or for anywhere, actually, since a stint on a Rhode Island weekly during a long-ago college summer…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 11:29PMThursday, March 30, 2017
“The Price” is not a comedy – far from it. But Arthur Miller’s seldom-staged play demonstrates something his other plays do not – that Miller could indeed write funny. Not just the…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 02:38PMFriday, March 24, 2017
It’s said that there are only seven plots. If so, who’s sleeping with whose husband/wife/SO must be at least two of them. The details of such assignations are revealed late in “Multipl…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:38PMMonday, March 20, 2017
Any people who don’t believe in the Magic of Theatre would be well advised to get themselves to “Come From Away,” where a dozen diverse performers, aided by some chairs, a few coats an…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:48PMWednesday, March 15, 2017
Before Lin-Manuel Miranda chose Ron Chernow’s 827-page biography of Alexander Hamilton to read on vacation, “In the Heights” had established him as a composer-lyricist to reckon with. …
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:17PMWednesday, March 8, 2017
Tradition has it that Queen Elizabeth, enamored of Falstaff from Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays, asked the playwright for a play depicting the character in love (a likely apocryphal ‘alt…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:39PMThursday, March 2, 2017
One of the two male characters in “All the Fine Boys” is well past boyhood and neither fits the definition of fine. Joseph (Joe Tippett), at 28, is, in fact, very un-fine; the other, Ada…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:34PMMonday, February 20, 2017
If good intentions were reason enough to skew a review to the positive, “Ring Twice for Miranda” would merit a rave. With one line toward the end, playwright Alan Hruska makes his intent…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:04PMFriday, February 17, 2017
“American Son” is an intense, racially-charged, cautionary tale in which the title character hovers over every minute but does not appear in person. The play is set at 4AM in the waiting…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 01:21AMFriday, February 10, 2017
Great art it’s not, but if you’re looking for a recipe for farce, all the ingredients can be found in “A Comedy of Tenors,” Ken Ludwig’s sequel to his enormously successful “Lend…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 10:24PMMonday, January 30, 2017
If you wished to come back as a Greco-Roman God, you could do far worse than to opt for Dionysus (Greek), also known as Bacchus (Roman), the god of wine, fertility and agriculture as well as…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:14PMThursday, January 26, 2017
Seeing different August Wilson plays directed and acted by the same theater artists must be like it was for Elizabethan theatergoers watching the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later The King’s…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:30PMSaturday, January 7, 2017
The last time I walked by the TKTS booth on Time Square at 47th Street, 22 Broadway shows were offering same-day discounted tickets, most for half-price plus a two dollar service charge. Sev…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:25PMTuesday, December 20, 2016
A seasonal departure from play reviews to reviewing having played… … Continue reading …
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 11:49PMThursday, December 15, 2016
Crafted by Chazz Palminteri from a true story from his 1960s youth, “A Bronx Tale” originated as his one-man show in 1989 (revived on Broadway in 2007, directed by Jerry Zaks). The 1993 …
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 12:41AMSunday, December 4, 2016
How cool would it be to have Sutton Foster come to your house to sing and dance in your living room? And suppose she brought some talented friends to perform with her? Well, that’s not gon…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 06:50PMMonday, November 21, 2016
Set over Christmas Eve and Day in the year 1183, “The Lion in Winter” is based on events in the lives of seven historical figures: Henry II, King of England, Scotland, Wales, etc.; his Q…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 04:31PMTuesday, November 15, 2016
Beginning at 8PM on Christmas Eve, you can watch the 1983 movie “A Christmas Story” twelve times in a row on TBS-TV, screening on the even hours up to 6PM on the 25th. Sans song and danc…
Linked From sceneonstage.com at 03:58PM 
