1,115 stories by "FRANK SCHECK"
It’s appropriate that Gina Gionfriddo’s new play has been compared favorably to Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles. Like that groundbreaking work, this delicious come…
You can get dizzy trying to keep track of the comings and goings in "Escape," Susan Mosakowski's comedy about three troubled couples. Performed in separate, distinct areas of the tiny La MaM…
So, Ludwig van Beethoven and Quasimodo are giving a panel discussion . . .
It's no joke, but rather the off-the-wall premise of "The Hunchback Variations." Not for the intellectually faint o…
From its startling opening image of a naked prisoner to its climactic reading of a jury's verdict, "Murder in the First" is the sort of juicy courtroom drama we rarely get these days.
Dan Go…
Tv viewers groaned when Barbara Walters asked Katharine Hepburn what kind of a tree she'd be " a sign Dulcy Rogers should have heeded. Her one-woman play begins and ends with the writer/perf…
A good rule of thumb about circus acts is that the less clothing the performers wear, the better. It's clearly a philosophy shared by Spiegelworld, the Australian creators of "Absinthe,...
The most memorable thing about "Two Intimate" is the audience seating: men on one side, women on the other, as if at an Orthodox Jewish wedding. Not only does this make for a rotten first-da…
Sometimes, memories are best left alone. Such is my experience with seeing the new revival of Simon Gray’s The Common Pursuit being presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company. This hi…
August Strindberg wasn't known for his comedies. The current revival of the Swedish playwright's rarely seen 1893 work "Playing With Fire" isn't going to change that.
It may not sound like much, but take my word for it. An elderly man reciting the lyrics of “Ol’ Man River” in a Yiddish accent is one of the funniest things to be found on …
What better place to see "Into the Woods" than, well, in the woods?
Stephen Sondheim's 1987 musical classic " not seen here since its Broadway revival a decade ago " will be presented this s…
Good luck searching for meaning in Title and Deed, Will Eno’s latest Rorschach test of a play being presented by the Signature Theatre. This monologue related by a nameless figure abou…
Get your mind out of the gutter.
Yes, the title of Mike Bartlett’s play might seem salacious considering that it concerns a gay couple whose relationship is threatened when one…
Religious and ethnic jokes abound in "Miracle on South Division Street," the new sitcom " excuse me, play " being appropriately presented in St. Luke's Theatre located in the bowels of a chu…
Ever felt trapped at a party listening to a windbag telling an endless story with no apparent point? Such is the experience of watching "Are You There, McPhee?" John Guare's new play, receiv…
George Bernard Shaw's 1903 classic "Man and Superman" is a weighty philosophical treatise disguised as a frothy rom-com.
The Irish Rep's revival successfully has it both ways.
On the surfa…
No one makes depression as attractive as Topher Grace. In "Lonely, I'm Not," the former star of TV's "That '70s Show" manages to make abject misery seem the only rational way to see the worl…
There were high expectations for the revival of Harold Pinter's "The Caretaker" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Starring Tony Award winner Jonathan Pryce ("Miss Saigon"), the production go…
If names like "Zork," "Minecraft" and "Zelda" mean nothing to you, then you are definitely not the target audience for "You Are in an Open Field." Described as the first "nerdcore musical," …
'The City Club" has everything you'd want in a 1930s-set musical: a deeply flawed nightclub-owner hero, long-limbed chorus girls in a frequent state of undress, vicious fedora-wearing gangst…
The pixiesh performer applies a distinctly modern stamp to a surprising range of material in her superb cabaret show at the Café Carlyle.
'Glee" meets "Hairspray" in "Fat Camp," a diverting musical about a group of overweight teens who find love and friendship at Camp Overton, where "You've got nothing to gain and everything t…
The most haunting character in "Headstrong" isn't onstage. He's Ronnie, a 35-year-old ex-football player who killed himself after sustaining head injuries while playing in the NFL.His fate i…
Raul Esparza is one of the few leading men who can carry a Broadway musical, but even his formidable talents are adrift in Leap of Faith. This musical adaptation of the little-seen 1992 Stev…
In his first significant effort since his Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning Proof, playwright David Auburn delivers a biographical drama about a once famous figure little known today: Joseph A…
