1,783 stories by "ELISABETH VINCENTELLI"
The title character in Edmond Rostand's swashbuckling romance of a play, "Cyrano de Bergerac," has a big nose. Make that a huge nose.
But don't mention it to Cyrano, because he'll cut ya " f…
It's not safe to preach Gospel to an anticapitalist. Just ask Chris, the unseen college student who, in A.R. Gurney's new comedy, "Heresy," is jailed for arguing that the mere word "consumer…
Welcome to the most boring midlife crisis of the year. No matter what happens to Harper Regan, the title character of Simon Stephens' new drama, it's hard to care.
Her supervisor snottily de…
Playwright Horton Foote made his name with wistful family dramas rooted in home and neighborhood. He left a big void when he died in 2009, and now the shoe is on the other Foote.
Not only h…
Rona Jaffe's 1958 best seller "The Best of Everything" certainly pressed a lot of hot buttons. Think "Sex and the City" set in the world of New York book publishing during the "Mad Men" era …
As the bittersweet new Broadway play "Grace" shows, religion, real estate and love have one thing in common: They require a degree of hopeful, maybe even blind, trust.
Steve " Paul Rudd, in…
Stephen Sondheim's musicals have been called textbook examples of integration " stories told through a seamless fusion of book and songs.
And yet many of Sondheim's tunes easily stand on the…
Post-apocalyptic plots are hard to screw up. Throw bedraggled survivors into dangerous situations, question civilization's future, and your audience is hooked.But while all these elements fi…
Up until intermission, "An Enemy of the People" seems like your run-of-the-mill Roundabout period revival. The casually paced production is dignified, well-acted by likable stars such as Boy…
You only have until Sunday to catch one of the finest performances in town. For the past two years or so, Jenn Harris has been absolutely fantastic in "Silence! The Musical." Because the sho…
Off-broadway's "Red Dog Howls" begins with the line: "There are sins from which we can never be absolved."
So, not a comedy then.
And that's an understatement: Alexander Dinelaris' new play,…
Paul is so devastated after Jennifer's unexpected death that he's wailing in pain. "She brought joy to my life," he tells Don, his friend and colleague. "She was a f - - king Hall of Famer,"…
Describing an overprepared but underskilled contestant on "The X Factor" recently, Simon Cowell said, "You're like a mouse trying to be an elephant."
Snap! And double snap for "If There Is I…
'the Exonerated" is about a very exclusive club no one would ever want to join: those who made it out of death row alive. Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's play tells the real stories of six o…
'Detroit" is deceptively small in scope. You could say it's about neighborly relations.
But Lisa D'Amour's dark comedy " which opened last night at Playwrights Horizons, after a successful …
There's nothing to understand in "Einstein on the Beach," nothing to "get."
And as the revival of this 1976 masterpiece shows, that's OK. As conceived by composer Philip Glass, director Rob…
In just a few years, the French Alliance's Crossing the Line Festival (fiaf.org/ctl) has become a fall staple. Focusing mostly on French and American artists, this interdisciplinary fest dra…
'i could be arrested for theft, fraud and murder, and it's not even 4 o'clock."
This isn't a hardened criminal talking, but a frazzled mother and home-care attendant named Loretta Mackey. S…
Anticipation always runs high in September. Yay, a new season! Tons of new shows to look forward to!
But while there are promising offerings this year, we may have to dig a little deeper to …
It's tough going for a comedy like "Mary Broome," which revolves around a spectacularly unsympathetic lead character. It's not Mary herself, by the way " because this 1911 play really is abo…
It's not a great sign when you leave a musical thinking more about the visuals than the songs " which is exactly what happens at Broadway's new "Chaplin."
The show about the silent-film icon…
It's been a good year for the South African playwright Athol Fugard, what with the Broadway revival of "The Road to Mecca" and the Signature company dedicating a whole season to his work. To…
When Broadway goes wrong " and sometimes when it goes right " it's a gaudy, tacky, self-important moving target. And for 30 years, Gerard Alessandrini has been taking shots at it in his belo…
Nothing much happens in Horton Foote's plays, yet you leave feeling satisfyingly full. He may skimp on the whiz-bang action, but Foote manages to say a lot about his characters " and you alm…
The Public Theater's new "Richard III" " Shakespeare's most violent tragedy " has been streamlined to the max. Edited down to 90 minutes, it has no set and few props.
But director Amanda Deh…
