1,783 stories by "ELISABETH VINCENTELLI"
The head writer for "SpongeBob SquarePants," Steven Banks also moonlights as the dark and twisted Billy the Mime. Now, he tries to reconcile his sugar-and-spice sides in a new play, "Lookin…
The woefully inept drama "Dracula," which opened off- Broadway last night, is as close as we get to dinner theater in New York. There's no prime rib, but plenty of grating cheese. While it …
A linguist speaks several languages, including Esperanto -- but he can't communicate with his estranged wife. Oh, the irony! Said wife leaves her marriage and becomes a baker -- after a kin…
There's a reason candy canes have a twist of peppermint -- to cut the sugar. That's why the best Christmas classics, from "It's a Wonderful Life" to "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," are so…
It's not often that you hear Schubert's melan choly song cycle "Win terreise" ("Winter Journey") in a down town theater. And not with classical musicians, either, but with three scruffy dud…
In the right hands, old-fash ioned farce can still kill, as the 2008 revival of "Boeing-Boeing" proved. The return of "Cactus Flower" -- another French comedy from the mid-'60s, this one ad…
"Wife to James Whelan" has just been extended. If you like an old-fashioned, well-crafted story, this is the show to see right now.
The show is at BAM until Sunday only, and it's well worth the trip for fans of both Fassbinder and cerebral Euro theater.
I like "Gypsy" and "Anything Goes" and "Mame" as much as the next theater critic, but sometimes I miss the volatile energy of a rock show on stage.
Neil Armfield's production is unusually gorgeous. And yet something in the program, of all places, really bugged me.
As a lifelong soccer fan, I'd never really paid much attention to American football. This all changed when I belatedly became obsessed with "Friday Night Lights." And clearly I'm not the onl…
And the avalanche of political plays contin ues. But rather than focusing on the recent elections, or even the Reagan and Bush administrations, Amy Herzog's "After the Revolution" goes furt…
Nearly two decades after it opened on Broadway -- and seven years after the HBO miniseries with Al Pacino and Meryl Streep -- Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" is considered a modern Ameri…
At times, "Gatz" casts such a strong spell that it feels as if the world outside the Public Theater has ceased to exist.And then there are the deadly boring stretches. Very long ones, consi…
Tennessee Williams would have turned 100 on March 26, and the past months have been jammed with revivals. Except we're not seeing his hits but late-period curios like “The Milk Train D…
How tepid was Broadway this year? The most talked-about show didn't even open. While waiting -- and waiting, and waiting -- for "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" to take flight, we watched a …
In his new play, "Middletown," Will Eno looks at a small Ameri can city whose most distinctive quality is that it has no distinctive qualities."There's a meadow you could walk to," a guide …
Since 1932, it's been impossible to think of the holidays in New York without the "Radio City Christmas Spectacular." The show is now a local tradition -- and, Lord knows, there are fewer a…
B'Way bound Some prime old-school thespians are hitting Broadway for fireworks of acting this fall. Cherry Jones sexes up as an entrepreneurial madam in G.B. Shaw's “Mrs. Warren's Prof…
A spectacular folly has just crash-landed at Lincoln Cen ter Theater. Eight years in the making, John Guare's latest play, "A Free Man of Color," is an ambitious, awkward, fascinating, lumb…
What's less surprising: that Lin-Manuel Miranda's “In the Heights” is proving remarkably resilient — or that “American Idol” winner Jordin Sparks can't act? Ove…
Boxing moves are often compared to ballet. "Beautiful Burnout" -- a high-octane show set in a boxing gym -- takes this analogy literally. The training and bouts explode on the elevated ring…
Irish novelist Edna O'Brien wrote a plum part for Brenda Blethyn in "Haunted," an oblique, wordy play about a waning marriage. The actress returned the favor by grounding the piece with rea…
Hardships, petty humiliations, financial strain, crushed hopes: That's what you can expect as an actor. At least that's how it is in David Mamet's "A Life in the Theatre" -- and it's a come…
