Tuesday, September 24, 2013
George Kelly's Philip Goes Forth at the Mint is an uneven production of an uneven play that nevertheless entertains and satisfies. Written in 1931, Philip Goes Forth treads familiar ground w…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:09PM[SHARE]Sunday, September 15, 2013
I went to see Ethan Coen's Women or Nothing with some misgivings due to its tagline: "Women or Nothing is a play about two women so desperate to have a child that one of them will even sleep…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:42PM[SHARE]Saturday, September 14, 2013
Watching the delightful production of George Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell being presented by the Pearl Theatre Company and the Gingold Theatrical Group, I had to periodically remind mys…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:03PM[SHARE]Friday, September 13, 2013
While watching Lee Blessing's mediocre A User's Guide to Hell Featuring Bernard Madoff, I found myself writing Caster's Rules of Satire.General Rules Rule 1: A satire should be entertaining.…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:06PM[SHARE]What does a playwright owe a living person on whom he or she bases a character? What does a playwright owe the audience who comes to see a play "based on actual events"? Some people argue th…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:12PM[SHARE]Sunday, August 25, 2013
The real-life siblings Mary and Charles Lamb lived in the 1800s in London and wrote together. The fictional (but-somewhat-based-on-Vivien-Leigh-and-Laurence-Olivier) Lee and Oliver are forme…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:37PM[SHARE]Sunday, July 28, 2013
Rory O'Malley, Bryan Fenkhart, Autumn Hurlbert, Lauren Molina, Roe Hartrampf, Heath CalvertIf you are looking for an entertaining piece of fluff, the musical Nobody Loves You at the Second S…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:37PM[SHARE]Last night, I visited an old friend who I hadn't seen in decades. The friend was I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road, and the reunion was lovely. Renée Elise GoldsberryI'm…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:09PM[SHARE]How did I respond to The Past Is Still Ahead, written and directed by Sophia Romma, at the Midtown International Theatre Festival? Let me count the ways: I thought it was brave, moving, inte…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:35PM[SHARE]Thursday, July 25, 2013
Do you suppose the performers in the Cirque du Soleil are actually human? For much of Quidam, I was convinced that they are stunning aliens visiting us from some magical realm where gravity …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:23PM[SHARE]Sunday, July 21, 2013
The website for the movie Pina says, "Pina Bausch [was] a legendary dancer and choreographer. Her unique creations transformed the language …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:36PM[SHARE]Saturday, July 6, 2013
Please welcome guest blogger Emma-Caster Dudzick. As an avid Harry Potter fan, Potted Potter sounded to me like an impossible feat: presenting all seven J.K. Rowling books in only 70 minutes…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:35PM[SHARE]Thursday, July 4, 2013
I guess that Barbra Streisand is a legitimate target of satirists and imitators. It's not as though she simply does her acting and directing and retires to her quiet life. She has put hersel…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:47AM[SHARE]Sunday, June 30, 2013
If you never had the amazing experience of seeing Colleen Dewhurst perform live, you can get a taste of how wonderful she was through the magic of technology. In 1959, John Steinbeck's Burni…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:40PM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Due to some technical thing or other, we have lost Liz's fabulous Here Lies Love Review. If you happened to have it on an email or feed or just cut and pasted it, could you get it back to us…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:59PM[SHARE]Monday, June 24, 2013
Playwright Mark Roberts is not a member of the Amoralists, but his play Rantoul and Die, well-directed by Jay Stull, is Amoralist material right down to its DNA. The characters are working c…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:00PM[SHARE]Wednesday, June 19, 2013
You have through July 14th to catch N.C. Hunter's A Picture of Autumn at the Mint, and you really should. This 1951 drama/comedy features a huge house and characters that would fit right in …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:38PM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Here's the basic formula of reviewing: a bunch of people, frequently talented, sometimes brilliant, strive for weeks, months, or years, often at great sacrifice, and then I show up and judge…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:35PM[SHARE]Sunday, June 16, 2013
In Frankenstein Upstairs, Mac Rogers once again uses science fiction as his delivery system to present us with his unique combination of insight, humor, wisdom, and compassion. The plot is s…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:17PM[SHARE]Friday, June 14, 2013
Sometimes more is less, as clearly shown by the revival of Pippin currently on Broadway. Or perhaps I should write "sometimes more is less for me," since Pippin's multitude of Tony Awards (r…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:59PM[SHARE]Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Everyone has the occasional bad bad at work; 3 Kinds of Exile offers us a few of John Guare's.The first exile, Karel, has a few advantages: (1) his story is genuinely interesting; (2) he is …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:30AM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Potted Potter promises to present all seven Harry Potter books in 70 minutes, a promise it only kinda sorta keeps. Its talented, energetic cast of two--Dan Clarkson and Jeff Turner, who are …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:52PM[SHARE]I was glad to see Cyndi Lauper win best score for a musical, because I love Cyndi Lauper.But then I happened to turn on the radio and catch the tail end of this interview. Specifically, I ca…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:23AM[SHARE]Monday, June 10, 2013
For the first time in years, I felt that the Tonys were ours again, that the show and the awards focused on theatre and existed to entertain people for whom theatre is so primary that their …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:26PM[SHARE]Monday, May 27, 2013
Smash has had its supporters and detractors, but even its supporters never defended its quality. "Guilty pleasure," they said. "The show you love to hate." And it's not like there hasn't bee…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:13PM[SHARE]Monday, May 20, 2013
In his one-man Macbeth, the protean Alan Cumming orates, cries, hits his chest, yells, whispers, throws things, and tries to drown himself. What he doesn't do is define characters or tell a …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:31PM[SHARE]Friday, May 10, 2013
I had no intention of seeing Nice Work If You Can Get It. I'm not a Matthew Broderick fan, and word-of-mouth made the show sound lame. Then nicely discounted tickets became available, and Je…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:58PM[SHARE]Jessica Walker has a pretty mezzo-soprano voice and a fascination with the male impersonators of the late 19th and early 20th century. With co-writer Neil Bartlett, she has turned these into…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:28PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 5, 2013
It's amazing what really excellent playwrights can pull off. Take the Flux Theatre Ensemble's Honey Fist, by the wonderful August Schulenburg. In a dry description, it sounds like a stew of …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:55PM[SHARE]Saturday, May 4, 2013
When reading reviews, you sometimes just have to wonder, "Did we see the same play?" The Call, written by Tanya Barfield, directed by Leigh Silverman, and currently playing at Playwrights Ho…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:36PM[SHARE]Okay, Collegiate Chorale, you spoiled us with The Mikado, and raised the bar far too high. Then along comes Song of Norway, an okay presentation of an unimpressive show. It doesn't help that…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:52PM[SHARE] 
