Wednesday, May 25, 2011
In his director's note for The Best Is Yet to Come: The Music of Cy Coleman, David Zippel aptly refers to "the dazzling depth and breadth" of Coleman's work. Dazzling depth and breadth indee…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:00PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 22, 2011
OUTSTANDING NEW BROADWAY MUSICALBloody Bloody Andrew Jackson OUTSTANDING NEW BROADWAY PLAYJerusalem OUTSTANDING BROADWAY MUSICAL REVIVALAnything Goes OUTSTANDING BROADWAY PLAY…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:14PM[SHARE]Monday, May 16, 2011
Joy Yandell, Karson St. John (photo: Daren Scott)Spoilers Throughout. San Diego's excellent Cygnet theatre is presenting a problematic production of Kander and Ebb's classic musical Cab…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:18PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The Patrick Lee Internet Theater Bloggers Association award nominations have been announced. Here they are:OUTSTANDING NEW BROADWAY MUSICAL Bloody Bloody Andrew JacksonCatch Me…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:50PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 8, 2011
Jill Eikenberry, Wrenn Schmidt (photo: Ben Arons)There are no new stories. This fact challenges every playwright (and novelist and screenwriter). Take, for example, the following three scena…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:35PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 3, 2011
There are wonderful moments in theatre when you suddenly realize that you are in the presence of someone special. The first time I heard Lisa Howard sing was one of those moments. It was an …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:06PM[SHARE]Before I get to her voice, and what she sang, and all those necessary details about someone performing a solo cabaret show, I need to get one thing out of the way: Laura Benanti is a hoot. N…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:07PM[SHARE]Mamie Gummer and Jenn Gambatese. Photo credit: Joan Marcus.I have to begin this review with a caveat: At the performance of The School for Lies I attended, an electrical outage down the bloc…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:05PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 1, 2011
According to the invaluable StageGrade, the Broadway musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown received an average grade of C- from a total of 31 critics. While it's clear that Women…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:56PM[SHARE]Saturday, April 23, 2011
In writing Seance on a Wet Afternoon, was Stephen Schwartz hoping to create his Sweeney Todd?
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:17PM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Playwright debbie tucker green's elegant, pared-down Olivier Award-winning play Born Bad is a formidable achievement.
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:16PM[SHARE]Marie and Bruce is a crass and juvenile--and unsuccessful--attempt at being shockingly funny.
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:56PM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 12, 2011
All I can say to David Leveaux, director of the current Broadway production of Arcadia, is shame on you.
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:16AM[SHARE]Monday, April 11, 2011
Victoria Clark Master Class. This is the second master class I've seen given by Victoria Clark. I've also seen Barbara Cook give one. All three were wonderful and occasionally awe-inspiring …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:09PM[SHARE]Thursday, April 7, 2011
If Michael Fray had written nothing but the delightfully hysterical Noises Off, he would still rate a place in the heart of all theatre lovers. However, Frayn has written a great deal more t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:25PM[SHARE]Monday, March 28, 2011
Playwright Read presents compelling, fully realized characters, and their secrets are both surprising and believable.
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:29PM[SHARE]Monday, March 21, 2011
Room presents an emotional portrait of a writer in desperate need of "the room to move, the room to breathe, the room to imagine; emotional room, creative room."
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:13PM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Shirley Jones's act at Feinstein's last night was a treat for her biggest fans, who laughed, cheered, stood, and even cried. For the rest of us, however, the news was not as good.
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:49PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 13, 2011
Photo: Daniel TernaTheChanging Room, by David Storey, is not big on plot. A bunch of Englishmen enter a locker room, kid around, change, and go out to play rugby--Act One. The owner of…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:09PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 10, 2011
Until this production, Abe Burrows' Cactus Flower had not had a major New York revival. That was a good thing. It is hard to understand why anyone would want to revive this flat, unbelievabl…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:00PM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Photo: Joan Marcus.Well-done story theatre uses its combination of telling and showing to invite the audience into the creative process. We help the performers invent entire worlds out of&nb…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:33PM[SHARE]If you look up the word lovely in the dictionary, there she is: Kate Baldwin, with her sweet, pure voice, beautiful smile, and great charm. In her current show at Feinstein's, She Loves Him,…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:57PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Anthropologist Krystal D'Costa was my companion for The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller. For her insightful take on the show, click here.
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:52AM[SHARE]Monday, February 21, 2011
While watching the Wooster Group's pretentious, pointless, and ham-handed production of Vieux Carré, a question occurred to me: What if it's not that the emperor has no clothes but rather t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:30PM[SHARE]Apple Cove is a satire of people who choose conformity and control to feel less frightened by the rest of the world. The show starts when newlyweds Alan and Edie move to the rule-bound Apple…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:47PM[SHARE]Photo: Lia ChangIn 1961, the anthropologist Michael Rockefeller, of the business-political-philanthropic Rockefellers, visited the Asmat people deep in the jungles of New Guinea. He fell in …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:04PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 17, 2011
Photo: Richard TermineThere are certain things that are devilishly difficult to pull off in a play. One is having middle-aged people reminisce about a shared wild youth without sounding arti…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:00PM[SHARE]Saturday, February 12, 2011
StageGrade provides an important public service for New York theatre-goers: it assembles reviews of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway shows, providing a synopsis, an average grade…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:18PM[SHARE]Friday, February 11, 2011
Photo: Isaiah TanenbaumIn Liz Duffy Adams' amazing new play Dog Act, presented by the Flux Ensemble Theatre, the apocalypse has come and gone, and various tribes scramble to survive in a bar…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:41PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Photo: James LeynseIn A.R. Gurney's stilted, unconvincing play Black Tie, middle-aged Curtis is thrilled at the prospect of wearing dinner clothes and giving a traditional speech at the r…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:19PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 6, 2011
Theodora Skipitares has directed a new version of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, featuring performers wearing Skipitares' masks or life-sized puppets. (The other puppet designers are Jane Catheri…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:20PM[SHARE] 
