At a moment of the highest possible tension, a character shoots a puppet. What makes that not just exciting, but truly extraordinary, is that you feel the entire audience shudder. "We're not…
The cast of the new Broadway revival of "Company" was in the middle of a two-show Friday on Thanksgiving weekend when they heard the news that the musical's legendary composer, Stephen Sondh…
A face smothered in banana cream has already sprung out from behind a refrigerator door. A silicone breast plate has been scorched over a stovetop. A man dressed like Margaret Thatcher on he…
Bestseller though it is " 10 million copies and counting " it's fair to say that "Life of Pi," the extraordinary story of a shipwrecked 17-year-old who did (or maybe didn't) spend 227 days a…
For audience members checking in at the final dress rehearsal of NBC's "Annie Live!" on Dec. 1, there was an additional stop along the usual security gauntlet. Between the airport-style meta…
A sandwich has always been a kind of vehicle, ingredients riding between sliced bread. Lynn Nottage improbably turns the lunchtime staple into the storytelling engine of "Clyde's," her decep…
Uzo Aduba does not play a great white shark in Lynn Nottage's new Broadway comedy "Clyde's" " but her role in the show does make her think, somewhat surprisingly, of "Jaws." Listen to this w…
Alice Childress' timely play "Trouble in Mind" is finally getting its Broadway debut " after a 65-year wait. The late playwright's first full-length work, about discrimination and imbalanced…
"Paradise Square," an ambitious new musical heading to Broadway in March, is a fictionalized historical take on the Five Points area of Manhattan and the social forces leading up to the viol…
Is it possible that Lady Di might have loved "Diana, The Musical"? We're talking about the princess who surprised Covent Garden with a duet to Billy Idol's "Uptown Girl," a brash and unsettl…
Director John Doyle's electrifying staging of "Assassins," Stephen Sondheim's macabre masterpiece about our national infatuation with fame and our appetite for violence, is a revival to die …
If the team of Ghanaian-American playwright Jocelyn Bioh ("School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play") and Kenyan-born director Saheem Ali brings nothing else to the stages of New York C…
The new Off Broadway play "Morning Sun" was written for Edie Falco " and it's not the most comfortable thing for her. Listen to this week's "Stagecraft" podcast below: "It was disarmin…
The djembe drum is the sacred heartbeat of West Africa, a powerful instrument conveying messages of struggle and liberation for African people. Traditionally used by griots to connect histor…
Stunning performances from Edie Falco, Blair Brown and Marin Ireland humanize Simon Stephens' new play "Morning Sun," an earnest if bland love letter to a kind, selfless but fundamentally un…
"Young hearts, to yourself be true." It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen never sang along with Candi Staton. But among the many things that the frankly sensational "Pride…
The musical "Caroline, or Change" is back on Broadway for the first time since its captivating original production closed in 2004. The best theater revivals highlight the relevance of classi…
The first thing audiences see at the new Broadway revival of "Caroline, or Change" is a statue of a Confederate soldier that, early on in the show, gets torn down in an act of protest. It's …
From "42nd Street" onwards, backstage stories were once a staple in the theater, and while there was often a shark or two, they were usually only of the loan variety. But in the West End pla…
Andrew Lloyd Webber would welcome a transgender performer in the cast of one of his shows, the composer and producer said in an interview recorded live at the Variety Legit: Return to Bro…
"I'm in this world but I'm not," the middle-aged woman confesses to an unseen interviewer in Lucas Hnath's "Dana H.," a mesmerizing solo show of theatrical shamanism that is receiving its Br…
Welcome to America, all ye wretched immigrants from impoverished foreign lands. Watch closely and learn as the three Lehman brothers from Bavaria " Henry the brainy head, Emanuel the powerfu…
The title character of "The Tragedy of Macbeth" is unequivocal: "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it was done quickly." Director Yaël Farber begs to differ. She takes one …
A hope for the future arrives in the final moments of "Thoughts of a Colored Man," a dutiful and expansive cataloguing of its title subject by Keenan Scott II. "I can't wait for the day when…
The fan-favorite Broadway veteran Norm Lewis is doing something he's never done before: starring on Broadway in a play. After a career marked by many of the great roles in musical theater ("…