Monday, April 22, 2019
As you probably already know, in the old days theatre critics wrote their reviews right after seeing the performances. In fact, as the shows ended, the critics ran up the aisles to maximize …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:25PM[SHARE]My sister once said that, while the worst men are incredibly sleazy, the worst women are incredibly stupid. In the world premiere of The Pain of My Belligerence at Playwrights Horizons, w…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:49PM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Marc Blitzstein's 1937 "play in music," The Cradle Will Rock, uses theatre as a political soapbox. Its scathing depictions of the hypocrisies of capitalism, religion, and other societal icon…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 31, 2019
John Webster wrote The White Devil in the early 1600s, and 400 years later it remains relevant and great fun. Red Bull director Louisa Proske underlines its timeliness with a modern-dress…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:30PM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 20, 2019
MasterVoices (formerly known as the Collegiate Chorale) has a long history of presenting wonderful evenings of song and theatre, and Night Songs and Love Waltzes fit right in. (There's also …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:09PM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 13, 2019
First, behold the title: If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka, sparkling with energy. Next, the structure: playwright Tori Sampson's dynamic, emotional play riffs on fol…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:58PM[SHARE]Monday, March 11, 2019
I've had a challenging and satisfying few hours chewing on the ideas and questions posed by Gus Schulenburg's new play Operating Systems, which I saw this afternoon. The description of…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:39AM[SHARE]Friday, March 1, 2019
What a difference a director makes.
When By the Way, Meet Vera Stark was done at the Second Stage, directed by Jo Bonney, it was hysterically funny, yet hard-hitting and even heart-bre…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:41PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 27, 2019
It's easy to discuss the lack of gender parity in theatre, but what can be done about it? The League of Professional Theatre Women exists to answer that question and to make things happen…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:37PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 20, 2019
The invaluable Mint Theater Company has found another underappreciated playwright from early in the last century. Elizabeth Baker grew up in an extremely religious household and didn't see h…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:33PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 3, 2019
I am frequently blown away by the depth and quality of the New York acting community. Brilliant performances are everywhere.(I've linked to my reviews for shows I did indeed review.)THE ENSE…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:06PM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 1, 2019
In 2018, I saw 74 shows. Only nine of them were on Broadway; those prices, even when discounted, keep scaring me away. However, I've lost little by skipping Broadway shows (as much as I woul…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:12PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 13, 2018
At the beginning of Erin Mallon's The Net Will Appear, 75-year-old Bernard climbs out of his second-story window to use the roof of the first floor as a deck. He sets up his camping chair an…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:42AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 12, 2018
"What, another musical based on a late 20th-century movie?" you may ask. Well, yeah. But here's the thing: it's really good.Zurin Villanueva, Dove Cameron Photo: Monique CarboniWriter/l…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:12AM[SHARE]Monday, December 10, 2018
I expected to like Noura, Heather Raffo's play at Playwrights Horizon. I knew it was about a Christian Iraqi family living in the US, which I found intriguing, and that it delves into assimi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:48PM[SHARE]Monday, December 3, 2018
Well-deserved raves for Martin Moran's heart-breaking solo piece, The Tricky Part, can be found at the Times, Theater Mania, and the Fordham Observer. I'm more interested in the why of …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:12PM[SHARE]Thursday, November 15, 2018
My latest essay is up at Art Times: I just voted, and I'm a nervous wreck. The sad truth is that no matter who wins, it's not going to be pretty. We seem to have lost the ability as a c…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:42PM[SHARE]Monday, November 5, 2018
I see political correctness as largely a good thing. For me, it connotes trying to honor other people and their needs; calling people by their chosen names; respecting that people with diffe…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:48PM[SHARE]The superb Druid production of Waiting for Godot, which is part of the Lincoln Center White Light festival, is damn close to perfect. Garry Hynes's meticulous direction exquisitely bala…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:42PM[SHARE]Every couple of years, the theatre company Premieres commissions three sung monologues. The writers are given no limitations in terms of content or theme. The latest three monologues, Inner …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:42PM[SHARE]Saturday, November 3, 2018
If you have any interest in circuses; if you love the daring young people on the flying trapeze; if you are entertained by amazing juggling or impressed by feats of strength or fascinated by…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:06PM[SHARE]Friday, October 19, 2018
A woman becomes aware of her surroundings. She is standing on a table and holding a gun. Behind her is a man who looks like he has been tortured, or maybe hit by a car, his injured arm secur…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:32PM[SHARE]Thursday, October 18, 2018
You know that old writing rule, "Show, don't tell"? It makes a lot of sense, particularly in theatre, where we watch characters live their lives right in front of us. Of course, there's also…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:06PM[SHARE]Monday, October 8, 2018
It's difficult this week to agree with the title The World Only Spins Forward. But in the story of Angels in America, the world did spin forward, as shown by this fascinating, info…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:12AM[SHARE]Friday, September 28, 2018
Nancy Shedman sits reading in a large-ish, empty, nondescript room. Her husband, Coleman, comes storming in, full of accusations and anger. Little by little the room fills, and Coleman reali…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:36PM[SHARE]It takes a lot of ambition to decide to do A Chorus Line at a small Off-Off-Broadway theatre. And it takes a lot of skill to pull it off. Luckily, the Gallery Players in Brooklyn have t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:36PM[SHARE]Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Is it ungrateful of me to wish that Sharr White's play, The True, presented by The New Group, had more to offer? Perhaps. After all, there is already much to like here: solid writi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:04AM[SHARE]Craig Lucas's new play, I Was Most Alive With You, is impressively ambitious. Performed simultaneously in English and American Sign Language (ASL), with some use of supertitles, it is an ext…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:04AM[SHARE]Monday, September 24, 2018
A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur is not one of Tennessee Williams's masterpieces, but it still deserves a better production than the one currently being presented by La Femme Theatre Pro…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:48PM[SHARE]More like a magazine story brought to life than an actual play, The Emperor still has much going for it, the main things being the performances of the protean and ever-fascinating Kathr…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:48PM[SHARE]Monday, September 17, 2018
In the acknowledgements at the end of Playing to the Gods: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and the Rivalry That Changed Acting Forever, author Peter Rader explains that he (with a …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:12PM[SHARE] 
