Playwright Joe Gilford's parents were Jack and Madeline Gilford, and Finks is his fictionalized account of how the "Red Scare" of the 1950s affected their lives and careers. Finks has all t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:56PM(I saw an early preview of Hands on a Hardbody, so take this review with the proverbial grain of salt.)A bunch of people stand around a pickup truck, each trying to win the vehicle by being …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:56PMWhether you are a guest, a speaker, or a show, it's important not to overstay your welcome. As a 90-minute one act, The Lying Lesson might have come across as an entertaining little show. As…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:28PM(I saw an early preview of Kinky Boots, so take everything I write with the proverbial grain of salt.)Kinky Boots is not a great show. I'm not even sure it's a good show. But it is an entert…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:09PMHere are the main reasons to see this lovely production of Much Ado About Nothing: Jonathan Cake as Benedick. Clear and smart direction by Arin Arbus. Jonathan Cake. Delightful scenery (Ricc…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PMA woman carrying a yoga mat comes home, drops her coat on the floor, starts stretching. She is startled to hear a noise in the bedroom when she is ostensibly alone. Her fear turns to annoyan…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:39PMWatching Teresa Deevy's engrossing 1936 drama Katie Roche made this contemporary woman extremely grateful to be a contemporary woman. Katie is a servant in a small town in Ireland in the 193…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:55AMJesse Eisenberg's new play, The Revisionist, seems to be a predictable exploration of familiar territory: Uneasy young man, complete with cache of weed, visits much older female relative. …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:00PMIf you like Bill Irwin and David Shiner, you will like Old Hats. It has everything you could ask for: baggy pants, brilliant physical humor, sublime silliness, and the magical ability to wal…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:33PMJohn Doyle is where Sondheim musicals go to die. His Sweeney Todd, with its instrument-playing cast, fractured staging, and missing throat-slittings, wasn't Sweeney Todd, and his Company, wi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:29PMBethany begins with Charlie (Ken Marks), a third-rate motivational speaker, practicing his spiel in the mirror. "And I'll tell you one thing about [your] higher power," he says. "He wants yo…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:10PMClive, written by Jonathan Marc based on Baal by Bertolt Brecht, and directed and starring Ethan Hawke, is yet another tale of a male artist so charismatic and tortured that people line up t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:48PMKate BaldwinFiorello!, the 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, requires a lead actor full of energy and charisma. In the current revival at Encores!, Danny Rutigliano, while likeable and ph…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:15PMIn his one-man show, All the Rage (directed by Seth Barrish), playwright-performer Martin Moran shares his intimate exploration of the sometimes-thin lines between hatred and love, victimhoo…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:00PMA young man dances energetically in his dorm to the music his iPod feeds into his ears. Another young man sneaks into the room and puts up posters of Che and Kurt Cobain. The first young man…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:02PMIf silliness can be an art form--and I believe it can--then The Mystery of Edwin Drood is an artistic triumph. From the pre-show call-and-response to the audience-chosen denouement, this mus…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:04PMA screen filling the back wall of the stage springs to life with vibrant video footage of the Everglades and other South Florida parks. Voices speak of nature, honoring nature, the importanc…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:00PMVivien Leigh, Robert TaylorWaterloo BridgeWhen I was a kid, Sunday was one of the highlights of my week because it included the Sunday NY Times Arts and Leisure section, with its robust and …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:15PMIn 2012, Show Showdown published 146 total posts. These twenty were the most read--or at least the most-clicked-on. I have tried to find a theme, but with no luck. Broadway, Off-Broadway, Of…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:30PMAn interesting thread on critics and spoilers on All That Chat got me thinking. As a theatre blogger, I've already thought about the role of a critic quite a lot, as discussed here. One conc…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:32PMOne show I accidentally neglected for my top ten list was Fun Home.* This amazing musical version of Alison Bechdel's brilliant graphic memoir, by Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron, was one of th…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:46AMOne of the luxuries of being a blogger rather than writing for a publication is being able to pick and choose what shows to see. Because I get to focus on plays that interest me or are writt…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:54PMFour hundred years after it was written, Volpone remains a delight. Volpone is a con artist, and his con is simple. He lets it be widely know that he is dying--and choosing an heir--and the …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:03PMThe ambitious Extant Arts Company recently presented two shows in rep: Sophocles' Antigone (translated by Sarah Sharp with Extant Artistic Director Greg Taubman) and Taubman's Progeny, a pre…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:40PMIn Ruby Preston's likeable but awkwardly written novel Show Biz, theatre critic Ken Kantor's suicide sets off shock waves that eventually change the lives of nasty producer Margolies, his am…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:57PMI wanted to like A Civil War Christmas almost as much as it wanted to be liked. Playwright Paula Vogel's sincerity is quite apparent, as is director Tina Landau's creativity. But this tale o…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:00PMThe Flux Theatre Ensemble continues their hot streak with the delightful Hearts Like Fists, currently at the Secret Theatre one subway stop into Queens. Three masked crime fighters, all wome…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:12PMThere is nothing new under the sun, yet a truly excellent playwright can make a familiar story new and vivid and surprising and heartbreaking. And Amy Herzog is a truly excellent playwright,…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:09PMA woman giving up on her marriage; the last lesbian on earth; breasts whose feelings are hurt because their owner finds them too small; a mega-multi-tasking woman with a mysterious past; and…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:08PMHow do you like your classics acted? Do you like naturalism with a touch of formality? Somewhat stagey orating? A colloquial, contemporary attitude? Monotones? Performances totally in the se…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:40AMWith viewers on two sides and at tables on stage, the sung-through Murder Ballad happens in the audience's collective face, offering immediacy, excitement, and the chance to be close to extr…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:00PM
