Saturday, May 4, 2013
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]Wednesday, May 1, 2013
In Sans Merci, written by Johnna Adams and directed by Heather Cohn, two young women, Kelly (the awkwardly, impressively real Rachael Hip-Flores) and Tracy (the lovely and intense Alisha Spi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:10AM[SHARE]Friday, April 26, 2013
At the beginning of Michael Healey's play, The Drawer Boy, a young actor/director named Miles (Alex Fast) shows up uninvited at the door of a farmhouse, hoping to carry out research on farm…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:44AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The Epic Theatre's version of Shakespeare's Richard III (here called Richard III: Born With Teeth) aims for immediacy, edge, and individuality, and it largely succeeds. With a strong cast le…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:00AM[SHARE]Sunday, April 21, 2013
Thrilled to have an audience, George and Martha--no, woops, Edgar and Alice--strut their hated and acid barbs with the eagerness of a three-year-old saying, "Mommy, did you see that? Mommy, …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:20PM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 16, 2013
A woman is bent over the back of a couch; a man stands behind her; a sex act is about to take place. The man seems reluctant; the woman encourages him; their discussion is clearly meant to b…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PM[SHARE]Sunday, April 7, 2013
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[SHARE]Monday, March 18, 2013
(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 10:56PM[SHARE]Whether 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[SHARE]Sunday, March 10, 2013
(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 04:09PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 3, 2013
Here 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 09:00PM[SHARE]A 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 07:39PM[SHARE]Friday, March 1, 2013
Watching 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 01:55AM[SHARE]Thursday, February 28, 2013
Jesse 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 08:00PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 24, 2013
If 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 08:33PM[SHARE]John 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 08:29PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 10, 2013
Bethany 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 11:10PM[SHARE]Friday, February 8, 2013
Clive, 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 09:48PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 3, 2013
Kate 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 02:15PM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 30, 2013
In 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 08:00PM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 22, 2013
A 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 08:02PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 17, 2013
If 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 10:04PM[SHARE]A 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 04:00PM[SHARE]Sunday, January 6, 2013
Vivien 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 12:15PM[SHARE]Friday, January 4, 2013
In 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 02:30PM[SHARE]An 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 12:32PM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 2, 2013
One 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 10:46AM[SHARE]Monday, December 31, 2012
One 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 12:54PM[SHARE]Saturday, December 15, 2012
Four 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 04:03PM[SHARE]Sunday, December 9, 2012
The 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 07:40PM[SHARE]In 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 03:57PM[SHARE] 
