181 stories by "Howard Shapiro"
Quintessence Theatre Group is presenting Shakespeare's Henry V on a naked stage in Mount Airy, with a minimalism that works until two new characters appear.
All the world's a stage, Shakespeare writes in As You Like It, and while that may be so, not all stages within that world are the same. Take the one at Act II Playhouse, the professional the…
The show, with a pleasant score by Albert M. Tapper that employs too many phrases no one used in 1933, and a book by Tony Sportiello that leans toward cute rather than clever, is fun enough …
When the celebrated performer Barbara Cook sang her first notes Wednesday night at the revitalized Prince Music Theater, she wasn't just giving a concert. She was rekindling big-time cabaret…
There's no skimping in the big-theater production of "Oklahoma!" that opens this season's Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, and the payoff is clear -- a grand version of Rodgers and Hammers…
Philadelphia's most produced playwright this season is eloquent and groundbreaking and his themes are universal.
In Terrence McNally's "Mothers and Sons," a taut, terrific new play getting the world-premiere it deserves at Bucks County Playhouse, values and perspectives clash for the entire 80 minutes …
Attention all Philadelphians down the Shore and all Shore people down there, too: If you've never enjoyed the silly pleasures of "Lend Me a Tenor," the popular American farce, you'll get you…
The script is badly executed, but the notion is cool " taking all four characters in "The Glass Menagerie" and re-imagining them so that the narrator, who remains the play's son, can re-exam…
InterAct Theatre Company commissioned the play four years ago, all the while shepherding playwright Eric Pfeffinger through his drafts. The payoff: A solid script with a clean narrative arc …
I have my qualms about "Barcelona," but not about the intensity with which Jackson Gay stages it.
Is it hot in here, or is it just me? Hoo-boy! It's not just me. It's the entire Suzanne Roberts Theatre, where the Philadelphia Theatre Company has opened David Ives' "Venus in Fur."
The Tony-award winning musical, essentially about raging teenage hormones, is a rough-hewn, intense and racy exploration of newfound sexuality in 19th-century Germany, but that's just one si…
If mama ain't happy in Walter Dallas' tight, convincing production of "A Raisin in the Sun," then nobody is.
While it's far from the dressy production that "Timon" may need to help mask its pedestrian script, this "Timon" is at least a clearly told tale.
At Lantern, it's all done with spitfire delivery that comes at you head-on " even comic scenes with the rascally brawler Pistol (Jake Blouch) are delivered with ferocity. And in the end, the…
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that over the last nights, Bristol Riverside Theatre's large-scale production (two dozen cast members and a 12-piece orchestra) of "The Pirates of Penza…
"Seminar" is a bulls-eye comedy about the power of words and the fragility of the writers who use them -- and as an added bonus, it's also an odd take on what it means to be a mentor.
I would tell you that the best reason to go see the late Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful is the extraordinary performance of Carla Belver, but then, there is the play itself.
Is life really a journey and not a destination? "Under the Whaleback" " a caustic play being given a terrific production by the Wilma Theater " is about a bunch of guys for whom life is sole…
The theater community comes together -- first to celebrate, then to plan. Inquirer theater critic Howard Shapiro reports.
The Delaware Theatre Company production of Bruce Graham's play about dementia and its effect on a family is first-rate. Inquirer theater critic Howard Shapiro reviews from Wilmington.
The new show at Society Hill Playhouse, an import from Rochester, gets more wildly funny as it goes on.
An exceptional one-man show about Bobby Kennedy, the president's little brother who loomed large in national life, is from New City Stage Company. Inquirer theater critic Howard Shapiro revi…
