Sunday, December 9, 2012
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]Tuesday, December 4, 2012
I 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 10:00PM[SHARE]Monday, December 3, 2012
The 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 02:12PM[SHARE]There 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 12:09PM[SHARE]Sunday, December 2, 2012
A 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 11:08PM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 21, 2012
How 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 01:40AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 20, 2012
With 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[SHARE]I didn't believe a word of Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale, directed by Davis McCallum. I didn't believe that the characters were real people. I didn't think that the references to Moby-Dick an…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:17PM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 24, 2012
It's 1956, and we're all at the annual quiche breakfast of the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein, and the members of the society, widows all, are salivating with ant…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:07PM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 10, 2012
There is a tremendous amount of talent on display at Craig Wright's play Grace at the Cort Theatre. Michael Shannon continues his run of brilliant performances, subtly yet vividly limn…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:46PM[SHARE]Monday, October 8, 2012
The father and mother have made their fortune in less-than-legal ways, but the father yearns to be respectable. He sees their innocent daughter as their ticket into acceptance from both thei…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:59PM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 3, 2012
When the superb actor Byron Jennings looks awkward and uncomfortable on stage, something is wrong. In this dreadful production of Jeffrey Hatcher's Ten Chimneys, directed by Dan Wackerman, t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PM[SHARE]Saturday, September 29, 2012
Reviewers are generally embargoed from writing about shows until their opening nights. The producers of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opted for a different approach, inviting theatre blogg…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:55AM[SHARE]Tuesday, September 25, 2012
(winners are in bold and underlined)Artistic Achievement Award: 5 Lesbian BrothersEllen Stewart Award: The Theatre Development Fund (TDF) Caffé Cino Fellowship Award: Astoria Performi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:22PM[SHARE]Monday, September 24, 2012
When a show is deeply sincere and takes genocide as its topic, the idea of criticizing it feels churlish and in bad taste. Therefore, let me stipulate that I recognize that Red Dog Howls was…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PM[SHARE]Sunday, September 23, 2012
By deciding to present in one evening three grueling Tennessee Williams one-acts--27 Wagons Full of Cotton, Hello From Bertha, and This Property Is Condemned--director Ken Schatz has set a m…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:44AM[SHARE]Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Sean McIntyre, Adam Lebowitz-Lockard Photo: Hunter CanningThe story of Job in the bible is one of the weirder episodes in a book full of weird episodes, and in The Flea Theater's produc…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:18PM[SHARE]Monday, September 10, 2012
Janie Brookshire, Roderick HillPhoto: Carol Rosegg1911. The upper-crust Timbrells gather in the drawing room to discuss the wedding of Edgar, the oldest brother, to his beloved Sheila. As al…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PM[SHARE]Sunday, September 9, 2012
You walk into the theatre carefully, skirting the floor-level stage, which is covered with gorgeous patterned silks and parasols and glittering chains of reflective circles. You take your se…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PM[SHARE]Friday, August 24, 2012
The Original Cast Recording of The Queen of the Mist, Michael John LaChiusa's tale of the stubborn Anna Edson Taylor and her trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1901, is a well-done repre…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:05PM[SHARE]Friday, August 10, 2012
I once saw a demonstration of second-tier gymnasts, people who were just below Olympic level. Watching their strengths and weaknesses made me understand and appreciate gymnastics more deeply…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:18PM[SHARE]Friday, August 3, 2012
Slowgirl is a lovely piece of theatre, small, quiet, simple-yet-complex, and real.Photo: Erin BaianoA 17-year-old goes to visit her uncle in the jungles of Costa Rica. She hasn't seen him si…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:26PM[SHARE]When it comes to making theatre--or any sort of art--sometimes "no" is even more important than "yes." Take The Last Smoker in America, an amiable, mediocre musical that opened last night at…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:23PM[SHARE]Saturday, July 21, 2012
Thirty-two separate characters are listed in the program for Baby Case, and I didn't care about any of them. The show is a descendant of Chicago, Ragtime, and Assassins, but without any cent…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:30PM[SHARE]Sunday, July 15, 2012
I thoroughly enjoyed Triassic Parq: The Musical in an earlier incarnation, when it was known as Jurassic Parq: The Broadway Musical. This time around I enjoyed it less. Part of the pro…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:15PM[SHARE]Sunday, July 1, 2012
It's always dangerous to see a show after hearing weeks of hype. Expectations are tricky things. But Tribes is every bit as good as everyone says it is. Billy is the only deaf person in his …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:03PM[SHARE]The Columnist, by David Auburn, is a smart, straightforward bio-play, with the juicy, juicy starring role of Joseph Alsop, the nationally syndicated columnist who both reported and made hist…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:29PM[SHARE]I love gossip. I love knowing who's sleeping with who and why X isn't talking to Z. But there is a limit. And, in his new memoir, Dropped Names, Frank Langella goes well past it.The book is …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:55PM[SHARE]Friday, June 29, 2012
What were they thinking?There are two ways to interpret this question. In the first, it's preceded by a silent "Are they nuts?" And that interpretation is certainly apt in relation to David …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:15PM[SHARE]Monday, June 25, 2012
Jordan Tisdale, William Apps Photo: Monica Simoes The Amoralists love to yell, and they do it well. In their shows, usually written by the smart and wry Derek Ahonen, people live operaticall…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:26PM[SHARE]Stephen Heskett, Hanna CheekPhoto: Deborah AlexanderWith Sovereign, playwright Mac Rogers and director Jordana Williams bring home the wonderful Honeycomb Trilogy with verve, humor, and a b…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:26PM[SHARE] 
