Thursday, March 19, 2015
There are two sorts of lovers. (This is simplified, but bear with me.) The first focuses on one thing at a time, giving it full and lingering attention. The other is more varied, changing po…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:35PM[SHARE]Saturday, March 14, 2015
If I hadn't seen the original production of On the Twentieth Century, I suspect I would have been as blown away by the revival as were my co-bloggers Liz and Cameron. But I did see the origi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:33PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 10, 2015
When a show covers 50 years, difficult decisions must be made about what to include and what to leave out. Long Story Short, which covers five decades of a love relationship, omits showing u…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:32PM[SHARE]Friday, March 6, 2015
I stumbled across this casting call for Doctor Faustus on Playbill.com, and a fascinating document it is. It gives the salary for actors doing shows at CSC (not much), discusses ho…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:02PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 1, 2015
Bravo to the Mint!Once again, the Mint has revived and revitalized a neglected play with respect, creativity, fine acting, excellent direction, and knockout scenery and costumes. This time a…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:19PM[SHARE]Friday, February 27, 2015
It is a wonderful thing that John & Jen exists. Written in the early 1990s, it was never going to be a huge hit or a big money-maker. Clearly Andrew Lippa (music and book) and Tom G…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:34PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 15, 2015
Here are some of the shows that have excited me as much as Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton:A Little Night Music (original Broadway production)Pacific Overtures (original Broadwa…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:34PM[SHARE]You On The Moors Now, written by Jaclyn Backhaus, is a de- and re-construction of the romantic tropes that have permeated our culture from Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Little Wo…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:35PM[SHARE]Talk about an anticlimax.First there is the announcement: Peter Dinklage and Taylor Schilling (aka, "The woman from Orange is the New Black") in Turgenev's A Month in the Country a…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:18AM[SHARE]Saturday, February 14, 2015
I suspect that there is something kind of brilliant and heart-breaking going on in Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's play, The World of Extreme Happiness. It didn't quite come across in the early prev…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:44PM[SHARE]I don't believe that every white person in the United States is a racist at heart , waiting only for the right provocation to reveal his or her true colors. I also do not believe t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:20PM[SHARE]Saturday, February 7, 2015
Osceola Mays was the daughter of sharecroppers and the granddaughter of slaves. She sang for the love of singing, her family, and Jesus. John Burrus was a rodeo cowboy who sang cowboy songs …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:25PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 1, 2015
The concept of Film Chinois, by Damon Chua, is a good one: noir goings-on in 1947 China, with a femme fatale who also happens to be a Maoist revolutionary. The writing is smart, wi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:10PM[SHARE]Saturday, January 24, 2015
In the truly amazing Between Riverside and Crazy, the wonderful Stephen Adly Guirgis signals us quickly that all is not what it seems. Pops, the old man in the wheelchair, is neither il…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:17PM[SHARE]Friday, January 23, 2015
So, suddenly there's an announcement. Julie Taymor. Anne Hathaway. Grounded. Tickets already on sale, and going fast.Anne HathawayVivien Killilea/Getty Images for PsiffIt's my turn to order …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:11PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 22, 2015
The line between elliptical fascination and obscure tedium can be thin, and the current production of A Delicate Balance falls to the wrong side far too often.John Lithgow, Glenn ClosePhoto:…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:28PM[SHARE]Saturday, December 20, 2014
Rebekah Brockman, Tom Pecinka in ArcadiaPhoto: Joan MarcusAaah, the joys of being an online reviewer. I don't get paid, and I often have to buy my own tickets, but I don't have to see shows …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:16PM[SHARE]Friday, December 19, 2014
He's not really the messiah. His mom is Mandy, not Mary. She's certainly not a virgin. For that matter, neither is he. Well, you know the story.It's Monty Python's Life of Brian, only now it…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:36PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 18, 2014
In the first scene of Kristen Palmer's Once Upon A Bride There Was A Forest, Josie (Rachael Hip-Flores) tells her boyfriend Warren (Chinaza Uche) that she will finally marry him but fir…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:03PM[SHARE]Saturday, November 29, 2014
Is all really fair in love and war? Not according to the thriller-comedy-love-story-political-commentary Asymmetric, written by the wonderful Mac Rogers, directed by the also wonderful …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:56PM[SHARE]Monday, November 24, 2014
The 1950s and early 1960s masqueraded as an innocent time in the United States, and nowhere was the masquerade more vivid than on television, with its faux perfect white families with thei…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:55AM[SHARE]Saturday, November 15, 2014
Many people consider The Real Thing to be Tom Stoppard's most accessible play, and I suppose that's true--but at what cost? Instead of Stoppard's usual verbal and mental fireworks, and …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:29PM[SHARE]Friday, November 14, 2014
The show is by Tom Stoppard. It takes place in two time periods. In the more recent period, a scholar is trying, with mixed success, to understand what happened in the earlier one. The play'…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:38PM[SHARE]Sunday, October 26, 2014
I'm sad to say that the Yale Rep production of Arcadia closed yesterday. It's one thing for me to suggest that you take a train up there to see it and another to suggest a time machine.…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:16PM[SHARE]Sunday, October 5, 2014
Bridget Everett, creator and performer of Rock Bottom, has been described as challenging, gutsy, provocative, hard-rocking, raunchy, and raucous, and those adjectives don't even begin to de…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:51PM[SHARE]On one hand, The Last Ship, music and lyrics by Sting, book by John Logan and Brian Yorkey, has already had a run in Chicago and should be in pretty good shape. On the other hand, it do…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:09PM[SHARE]Saturday, October 4, 2014
By intermission, I found Bootycandy to be an entertaining, occasionally insightful, and random collection of skits. By the end of the play, I realized that Bootycandy is a sma…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:36PM[SHARE]Saturday, September 27, 2014
Next to Normal is a superb musical. Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's depiction of a woman derailed by mental illness and loss, and of the people around her, mixes compassion, humor, insight, and …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:45PM[SHARE]Sunday, September 21, 2014
In Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne's charming new piece, The Valley of Astonishment, the titular valley is that uncharted, elusive area where brain metamorphoses …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:09PM[SHARE]I have this theory about plays and movies. If the main character or another character learns something and grows, the piece can last hours. But if the characters remain stuck and learn nothi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:00PM[SHARE]Thursday, September 18, 2014
If there is a theatrical heaven whence long-deceased playwrights can watch their work, then I'm certain that George Kelly is thrilled with The Mint's new production of his fascinating play, …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:46PM[SHARE] 
