181 stories by "Howard Shapiro"
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during rehearsals for the frantic production of The Mystery of Irma Vep, which is unraveling, or detonating, or maybe mushrooming, on the stage of Ambler's…
Dito Van Reigersberg and Luigi Sottile give it all they've got, then come up with some more, in this super-whacko version of "The Mysetery of Irma Vep" at Act II Playhouse. Inquirer theater …
The Tony-winning "Red" is not only playing at Philadelphia Theatre Company, but also at the Shore. Inquirer theatre critic Howard Shapiro reviews from Cape May.
The robust InterAct Theatre Company production of Sarah Treem's "The How and the Why," at the Adrienne Theatre, tells the story of two women scientists, each on opposite ends of their career…
The world premiere of Irish playwright Marina Carr's "Phaedra Backwards" makes the myth sizzle. Inquirer theater critic Howard Shapiro reviews from McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J.
The excellent, fast-moving rendition of The Merchant of Venice by Quintessence Theatre Group at the Sedgwick in Mount Airy is all the more interesting for its choices.
An excellent, fluid "The Mercant of Venice" is being staged by Quintessence Theatre Group at its Mount Airy home, the Sedgwick Theatre. Inquirer theater critic Howard Shapiro reviews from n…
The extraordinary play and production of "Our Class" is in its American premiere at the Wilma. Inquirer theater critic Howard Shapiro reviews.
The theater, in its first tour, stages improved version of the show Off-Broadway.
The Wilma Theater led all others Monday night at the 2011 Barrymore Awards, the region's professional theater honors, for its production of Sarah Ruhl's offbeat, often funny play In the Next…
Agatha Christie's theatrical mystery, Black Coffee, is like
her work in general: methodical and not showy. So too is her primary hero, the Belgian
detective Hercule Poirot. And the same go…
In Kimberly Akimbo, which opened Thursday and is getting a good ride at Theatre Horizon in Norristown, playwright David Lindsay-Abaire calls for an actress in her 50s to play a 16-year-old.
It's all a bit much - and a bit too little. Lloyd Webber's painfully swollen music (played with gusto by the Walnut's orchestra, which knows its way around a crescendo, or two, or maybe 70) …
The Inis Nua production, seen here in April, has opened Off-Broadway.
The Wilma Theater's production of an offbeat, often funny play about the early history of vibrators and a children's show at the Arden Theatre top the nominations for the Barrymore Awards fo…
The women have it all over the men down the Shore this summer - at least on stage. During lemming time, the current period when Philadelphians seem to flock to Jersey beaches with an innate …
CENTER VALLEY, Pa. - Nobody had a makeup artist in the Elizabethan theater, or a lighting designer, choreographer, or even a director.
John Rosenberg's intense new play is set on his birthday in 1976, but has nothing to do with him, only with the era. A week before his October birth, the leaders of Germany's terroristic Baa…
In the crisp, fluid rendering of Tartuffe by Temple University's professional Repertory Theater, the maid is a strikingly insolent Genevieve Perrier, who spouts orders and insults in a charm…
The Bard has plenty of company in playhouses this season.
An idealistic actor is drawing performers to do their thing on the former estate of a trolley magnate in Cheltenham. And the results are free to see.
At the Wilma Theater, where Alan Ayckbourn's comedy My Wonderful Day starts off quietly and gets funnier and funnier as it plows forward for 90 minutes, I was completely bamboozled - and wha…
In Lynn Nottage's powerfully crafted Ruined, which opened Wednesday night in director Maria Mileaf's riveting production by the Philadelphia Theatre Company, you want so much to believe that…
The clever, sweet new musical Sleeping Beauty Wakes, at Princeton's McCarter Theatre Center, is about what happens when science runs up against love.
In Theresa Rebeck's play, commissioned by the University of Delaware's professional theater company, REP, Mic Matarrese (right) as the smarmy extremist talk-show host interviews Drew Brhel a…
