On Sunday, the Tony Awards will recognize artists who did exceptional work in the 2015-16 Broadway season. As always, there's a rich bounty of nominated talent to choose from, but the�…
A precious First Folio of Shakespeare plays, one of several on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library, has arrived at the San Diego Central Library, where it will remain for the next month…
Harold Bloom subtitled his magnum opus on Shakespeare "The Invention of the Human" in recognition of the Bard's unprecedented ability to imagine the lives of others. The question I've…
Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape," written in 1921, still has the tang of an experiment by a relatively young writer testing the frontiers of what the drama can do. Mixing brutal expressionis…
Antonio Salieri, relegated by posterity to the shadows as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's journeyman contemporary, will always have Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus" to augment his notoriety, if not his f…
For those who have been tracking the thrilling career of the Belgian-born, Amsterdam-based director Ivo van Hove, the last place you'd expect to find him working is Broadway. But the Flemish…
Last year, the Tony Awards could have adopted the hashtag #TonysSoBritish. This year, the nominees announced Tuesday morning look like the anti-Oscars, so diverse is the roster. There may no…
The historical significance of "Hamilton"'s trove of Tony nominations
Alan Mandell, the evergreen 88-year-old actor, confessed that he might be ready to bid farewell to the stage when I interviewed him last year on the occasion of his performance in the Mark T…
A Broadway history lesson is being delivered these days at the Music Box Theatre, and never has anything this educational been so sensationally staged. All credit to Professor George C. W…
" Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night," considered by some to be the greatest American drama, is a marathon of family squabbling. Grueling in the wrong hands, the play's relentle…
OK, theater buffs, get ready to be stumped. From what musical did "I'm Just Wild About Harry" spring? If you answered "Shuffle Along," you either have an encyclopedic memory (and way too man…
What is that indefinable quality that makes an actor a star? Jessie Mueller, who won a Tony in 2014 for her performance in "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical," helped me once again answer t…
In "Sweeney Todd," Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler proved that laughter in a musical could make the adrenaline pump harder. Funny, it turned out, didn't have to be the nemesis of fear. A t…
Homer's "The Odyssey" looms large in Suzan-Lori Parks' "Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3)," her entrancingly intimate, anachronistically frolicsome Civil War drama that opened…
Actors are required to kiss all the time in their line of work, but can a smooch really be faked? Passion simulated either becomes real or risks looking contrived and yucky. Sarah Ruhl, the …
Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is far too independent an artist to feel comfortable in the role of African American spokesperson. But she didn't hold back when asked for her thoughts about the …
Before Irish actress Lisa Dwan takes the stage for the "Beckett Trilogy" she has been performing internationally to much acclaim, theatergoers are warned that they are about to be plunged in…
Michael John LaChiusa, the richly talented author of such ambitious musicals as "Marie Christine" and "Hello Again," doesn't gravitate toward frivolity. His sensibility is unabashedly litera…
"The Revisionist," a play by actor-writer Jesse Eisenberg about a pompous, inconsiderate young American novelist who pays a visit to a Polish relative he barely knows, tests an audience's to…
For "A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder," homicidal ambition is the mother of musical comedy invention. This Tony-winning musical, about an acquisitive young man of questionable parentage …
"Casa Valentina," Harvey Fierstein's 2014 Tony-nominated play, couldn't have found more trustworthy hands than those of director David Lee. The West Coast premiere took place Sunday at the P…
For those who have been tracking the thrilling career of the Belgian-born, Amsterdam-based director Ivo van Hove, the last place you'd expect to find him working is Broadway. But the Flemish…
Jeff Daniels has returned to Scottish playwright David Harrower's disquieting drama "Blackbird," and his experience in the play has not only deepened but galvanized his performance. Excellen…
Food is complicated, as any dieter can tell you. Eating, even for the naturally slender, is an emotional activity. When the narrator of Marcel Proust's sprawling masterpiece, "Remembrance of…