1,121 stories by "Charles Isherwood"
Summer is not officially the silly season on Broadway, but you might be forgiven for assuming so should you wander into the Hudson Theatre, where "Head Over Heels," a fearlessly loopy new ju…
In case you have been singing loudly with your fingers stuffed in your ears for, say, a year and a half, you have probably noticed much soul-searching in the media, along with plenty of outr…
"Thanks for the laughs," says Harold, whose disorderly birthday celebration is the occasion on which the men in "The Boys in the Band" gather for an evening of cutting barbs, bottomless cock…
“Something to Dance About”—a one-act compilation that references Robbins’ greatest work from On the Town to West Side Story—premieres at the New York City Balle…
When Denzel Washington, who plays the salesman Hickey in the shatteringly good Broadway revival of "The Iceman Cometh," unleashes his dazzling smile, it's fair to conclude that he could sell…
George Bernard Shaw's plays are performed so rarely on major New York stages that it's hard not to feel grateful for a chance to see a first-class production of "Saint Joan." Unfortunately, …
Someone really did leave the damn cake out in the rain. That's my metaphorical summation of "Summer: The Donna Summer Musical." Fans will recognize the allusion, and I'll throw in one more f…
Impeccable is the first word that springs to mind to describe the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Lerner and Loewe's "My Fair Lady." But that's really no surprise. The director, Bartlett S…
At the core of "Carousel," which has been revived with breathtaking emotional intensity at the Imperial Theatre, is a dark fatalism that trails the leading lovers like their own shadows. Alt…
Does it make me a mean girl if I say that "Mean Girls," the new Broadway musical based on " well, duh! " is, like, tbh, just OK? Sorry. My mean. But that's kind of my job. As with many new B…
Unless you have a raging fever, an ice bath wouldn't seem like a particularly pleasurable experience. And yet "Three Tall Women," Edward Albee's late-career masterpiece being revived on Broa…
If only what happened in Budapest stayed in Budapest. I have nothing in particular against the city, really. I quite enjoyed my one visit there many years ago. There was a nice castle, I thi…
"The world only spins forward," says Prior Walter, ravaged with AIDS but still enduring, in the culminating speech of "Angels in America," Tony Kushner's majestic drama about our country and…
Should hell freeze over " and given global environmental trends, well, who knows? " it's possible that "Frozen" will not be Disney's next from-now-until-eternity Broadway blockbuster. But I …
All those who declined to take out a second mortgage to buy a pair on the aisle for Bette Midler in "Hello, Dolly!" can stop rending their garments and tearing out their hair. The revered Br…
The room is a very modestly furnished kitchen: mismatched chairs around a table, a miniature refrigerator, a scruffy but cozy-looking armchair, slightly out of place. But this mundane settin…
Continual waves of radiance, warming the blood and stirring the heart, flow forth from the sand-covered stage of the Circle in the Square Theatre, where an absolutely incandescent revival of…
Sleepy times, right? No drama emanating from our nation's capital. Barely enough sensation to fill a single page of a broadsheet. Nary a shocking revelation to warm the cockles of a cynic's …
The stars supply most of the fireworks in "Meteor Shower," a scattershot " and even scatterbrained " comedy of bad manners by Steve Martin at the Booth Theatre. The cast member whose presenc…
Overwhelming? Yes. Self-involved? Absolutely. But Drew Droege still makes for hilarious company in this one-person show.
A business degree is not a prerequisite for an appreciation of "Junk," a new play by Ayad Akhtar about the heady heights and ethical lows of American finance in the 1980s. But it certainly w…
That silk kimono hides a scandalous secret in "M. Butterfly," David Henry Hwang's 1988 Tony Award-winning drama about the romance between a French diplomat and the Chinese opera singer he be…
“I’ll handle this myself,” said Bruce Springsteen with a wry smile on Wednesday night at the Walter Kerr Theatre, as his enraptured audience began to clap along in rhythm t…
The ineluctable force that touches all our lives " the day-to-day, year-to-year process by which the present becomes the past, and the future bears down upon us " is the melancholy subject o…
What's the last word I thought I'd ever use to describe a show directed by Harold Prince? Bland. And yet, sadly, that's the overall effect of "Prince of Broadway," a polished but disappointi…
