All stories by Robert Cushman on BroadwayStars

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Streetcar Crowsnest’s True Crime proves Torquil Campbell can do it all by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: He can be hilarious, in modes silky or self-deprecating. He can be frighteningly angry. He can be just as frighteningly lost

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 07:02PM
Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Crafty, comical and self-mocking, Karen Hines’s one-woman show Crawlspace will draw you in by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: Whenever you think that her 90-minute hard-luck story has outstayed its welcome, Karen Hines draws you back in

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 04:32PM
Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Introducing Stupidhead!, a small-scale one-woman musical and account of living with dyslexia by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: It’s a show that has its share of wry self-deprecation, but is more about living with and even overcoming obstacles

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 07:24PM

The more ground Sousatzka attempts to cover, the more it loses touch with what could keep it alive by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: It’s also the return to producing of Garth Drabinsky, who gave us such masterful shows as Ragtime and Kiss of the Spider Woman

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 07:24PM
Tuesday, March 21, 2017

A break in tone, style and subject alter an otherwise amusing production of The Orange Dot by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: Tension keeps us interested through dialogue that is generally easy-flowing and sometimes amusing

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 03:48PM
Tuesday, March 14, 2017

‘A parade of disagreeably dull people, with intermittent flashes of wit’: On Erin Shields’s The Millennial Malcontent by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: Maybe we’re not meant to take it seriously and Shields is attempting the impossible — being ironic about irony

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 06:48PM
Tuesday, March 7, 2017

‘American playwriting is back on a roll’: Aaron Posner’s Stupid F–ing Bird is ‘theatrically illuminating’ by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: This Toronto season has brought us John, Father Comes Home from the Wars, The Realistic Joneses and now this. American playwriting is back on a roll

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 03:06PM
Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Five Faces for Evelyn Frost is a flawless performance that can’t help but generalize by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: There are five actors in Five Faces for Evelyn Frost – two male, three female – and they hardly ever make contact

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 06:32PM

Anton Piatigorsky’s Breath in Between is ‘all ideas, no flesh’ by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: The author, who is also the director, hasn’t found a style that would carry us with him

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 06:32PM
Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Chekhov looms as ever over Toronto’s Superior Donuts and My Night With Reg by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: In the American play, everything is laid out on the surface; in the British one, the important things are happening underneath

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 04:42PM
Tuesday, February 14, 2017

How Black Mothers Say I Love You isn’t actually boring, but it conveys an exaggerated belief in its own effectiveness by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: The best to be said for her new play How Black Mothers Say I Love You is that a television spin-off is an unlikely prospect

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 07:54PM
Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Proximity and authority cast their customary spell in the compelling Measure for Measure by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: There are supporting performances that I’m tempted to call the best I’ve seen in the roles

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 05:24PM

‘A magnificent evening’: John boasts as good and reverberant a final curtain-line as you are ever likely to encounter by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: This play, by the rising young American playwright Annie Baker, lasts more than three hours but has no dull moments

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 05:24PM
Tuesday, January 31, 2017

For a play that talks so much about emotion, Liv Stein communicates hardly any of it by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: The author was 25 when she wrote the play and it has the pretentiousness of youth without the excitement

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 08:36PM

Passing Strange is a ‘vibrant’ piece about an aspiring young musician by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: At its end, Passing Strange succumbs to the kind of portentousness seemingly unavoidable in rock musicals

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 08:36PM
Wednesday, January 25, 2017

The Wedding Party at Streetcar Crowsnest is a ‘riotous farce in the service of sharp social observation’ by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: The Wedding Party is a new play by Kristen Thomson, staged by Crow’s indefatigable artistic director Chris Abraham

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 06:12PM
Thursday, January 19, 2017

Sequence crackles enough to hold your attention, but the characters are counters at best by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: Sequence belongs to the growing genre of scientific-mathematical-philosophical plays that proceed through argument, usually spiced with melodrama

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 04:04PM
Thursday, January 12, 2017

‘Virtues far outshine the flaws’: The Next Stage Festival in Toronto is full of spirit and precision by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: The words, sung and spoken, and the music are the joint work of Anika Johnson and Barbara Johnston; near-namesakes but not related

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 07:54PM
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Wednesday, December 28, 2016

The very best of this year’s theatre scene, including Come From Away and All My Sons by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: Jordan Tannahill’s Botticelli was the best new Canadian play of the year; Sunday, its double-bill partner, wasn’t but was still worthwhile

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 07:48PM
Thursday, December 22, 2016

The sentimentality in Soulpepper’s It’s A Wonderful Life will get to you, but you may hate yourself afterwards by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: In the concluding stages you forget the trappings and get caught up in the story, which I guess is the intention

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 05:33PM
Thursday, December 15, 2016

You can’t say ‘anything goes’ in Ross Petty’s Sleeping Beauty, but most things do by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: This Sleeping Beauty, recognizably a Ross Petty production even without Petty on stage, has many things going for it

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 02:04PM
Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Daniel MacIvor moves around and bounces off Spalding Gray in his new one-man show by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: Three narrative streams flow through the play, feeding into one another

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 04:54PM
Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Come From Away is an ‘outstandingly sensible’ production that couldn’t have a better ending by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: All these characters, plus the subsidiary ones that all the actors take on, add to a mosaic of people coming together and recoiling from differences

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 01:42PM
Monday, November 28, 2016

The show must go on: How New York’s theatre scene responded to the election of Donald Trump as president by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: I have been visiting New York for 50 years, and have never fallen out of love with it. Right now, I love it more than ever

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 07:18PM
Thursday, November 24, 2016

In Will Eno’s The Realistic Joneses, American family drama meets the Theatre of the Absurd by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: This isn’t one of those American plays in which family members yell at one another while pulling skeletons out of cupboards

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 05:18PM
Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Based on an old Canadian legend, the Young Centre’s Chasse-Galerie is irresistible by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: As the plot proceeds and conflicts get underway, the dancing takes on real dramatic power

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 08:36PM
Tuesday, November 8, 2016

David Yee plays his own protagonist in Factory Theatre’s Acquiesce, with humour and ‘an appealing wariness’ by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: The accomplished actor and playwright presents Acquiesce, the opening production in Factory Theatre’s season of plays by authors of colour

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 05:48PM

Cuisine & Confessions is ‘a culinary Cirque du Soleil,’ in which the acrobatics are ‘the most important ingredient’ by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: They execute their maneuvers with charmingly casual grace, and some of the feats are breathtaking. They put the audience in a pleasurable trance

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 05:48PM
Thursday, November 3, 2016

The Coal Mine Theatre’s Breathing Corpses is a genuine seat-clutcher and a puzzle by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: It closely resembles Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, which moved steadily back in time to explain, or at least illuminate, its initial situation

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 04:06PM
Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Tomson Highway marks his return to Toronto theatre with The (Post) Mistress, a cabaret act dressed as a play by Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman: Tomson Highway returns with a more modest work, a show whose principal revelation is that he is a first-rate piano player

SOURCE: news.nationalpost.com at 06:04PM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards