1,809 stories by "ELISABETH VINCENTELLI"
It's tough enough to fill an arena when you have a superstar. What do you do without one?
If somebody could come up with a solution, it's Cirque du Soleil, whose latest spectacle, "Michael J…
Watching "Pipe Dream" at City Center, you have to pinch yourself now and then to make sure you're not hallucinating.
Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1955 show " presented in concert by Encores! " …
As Disney shows go, "Newsies " The Musical" covers all the familiar bases: a wily scamp of a hero matched with a plucky girl, a blustery villain, and a young smarty-pants overcoming every ob…
A magic show is a magic show is a magic show. You've got illusions, mentalist feats and sleights of hand. Animals appear out of thin air. Someone may or may not be cut by a sharp blade.
The…
Back in 2006, the sly little tuner "[title of show]" made a pretty big splash. As quirky as its moniker, this was a selfreferential musical about writing and performing a musical, starring t…
The new drama "Regrets," set in 1954 Nevada, looks quite nice: Small wood cabins are huddled onstage, with the desert sky in the back and a cooking fire in the center. You can almost smell t…
You need a lot of bells and whistles to get noticed these days, let alone land a hit. Some shows bank on stars, usually brought in from the screen. Some rely on songs so popular, the audienc…
If "'Tis Pity She's a Whore" debuted today, John Ford's gory, perverse play would land in a downtown hole and possibly cause a ruckus comparable to past NEA scandals.
But "Pity" was publish…
It's hard to pin down Jesus in the 1971 rock musical "Jesus Christ Superstar." Sometimes, co-creators Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice seem to agree with Mary Magdalene, who sings "He's a ma…
The new off-Broadway show "The Big Meal" is high-concept, to say the least. In just 90 minutes, playwright Dan LeFranc tracks Nicole and Sam over several generations " romance, marriage, ten…
The new Broadway musical "Once" doesn't have a swinging chandelier, tap-dancing showgirls or brand-name stars. There's only one set " and it doesn't levitate.
The show wins its standing ovat…
Violence, fantasy, jealousy, dominance and submission, death " Jean Genet's play "The Maids" has it all!
Two sisters working as servants for a rich woman engage in elaborate role-playing ga…
An interesting case, that Willy Loman. Cynics would say the title character of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" is one of the biggest losers to ever grace the stage " yet actors trip ov…
Chicken or fish? Leno or Conan? Rent or buy? Decisions, decisions.
Theatergoers are facing an equally tough choice with "An Iliad," a new one-man show that features two men.
Depending on the…
Don't let the title throw you: This is no epic about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel. The subject of Tina Howe's play "Painting Churches" is an elderly couple named Fanny and Gardner Chu…
Jo sure knows how to play party games. "I am your wife, and I am dying," she snaps at her husband, Sam, during a round of 20 Questions, while their guests look elsewhere. That's one way to p…
There's so much going on in the new off-Broadway show "Tribes" that it's almost overwhelming: intellect and sentiment, love and cruelty, witty zingers and biting put-downs. But in Nina Raine…
There are two ways to bring back a flop. The first is to believe the show was good but badly staged, and to have a visionary set things right.
The "Carrie" revival that opened off-Broadway l…
Despite what Paula Deen says, there is such a thing as too sweet. But the creators of "Rated P for Parenthood" didn't get the memo, and their musical could send unsuspecting audiences into a…
Fun fact: After graduating from NYU, playwright Leslye Headland ("Bachelorette") briefly worked as Harvey Weinstein's personal assistant. Now, a tyrannical tycoon looms over her blistering n…
The best part of Katori Hall's Broadway debut, "The Mountaintop," was the very end, when the show really took flight. Most of the time, the 30-year-old playwright seemed constricted by her s…
'life in this house is intolerable," someone moans in the terrific British family drama "Rutherford & Son," now at the Mint.
But while the home's gloomy, Githa Sowerby's 1912 play is a theat…
If the skies had looked the way they do in Bertolt Brecht's "Galileo," which just opened at Classic Stage Company, the famous Italian astronomer may never have looked up a telescope. It's as…
Don't let the author's name throw you: Though these "Early Plays" are by Eugene O'Neill, these aren't your grandmother's classics.
To begin with, you can't really call the three one-act piec…
William Shatner makes most screen actors look like puppets with too many media-training classes.
It's not as if he's a great thespian like, say, Christopher Plummer " for whom Shatner under…
