Former New York City Mayor David Dinkins used to refer to the city as a gorgeous mosaic. That phrase came to mind for a couple of reasons while I watched "Black and Blue," an ultimately comp…
“The Sound of Music” told from the point of view of a gay Nazi; biographies of three African-American men — W.E.B. Du Bois, Stokely Carmichael, and Richard Pryor. These are…
On her 95th birthday, Muriel Mandell reviews Hamilton and other Broadway shows. “I understand a five-year-old has been reviewing theater, and so I thought, well, why can’t I?R…
In his solo show about comedian Richard Pryor, Â Khalil Muhammad has figured out a novel way both of presenting the man's life and giving a taste of his comic approach. Muhammad doesn't po…
John McDonagh calls his solo show "Cabtivist" because he's been driving a New York City taxicab for 35 years, and because he's been a political activist for almost as long. Maybe he's named …
There are few Americans who made a greater contribution to the nation's cultural, civic and intellectual life in the 20th century than William Edward Berghardt DuBois, who lived an extraordi…
Her daughter Rani has turned 16, and so Chameli is haggling with a customer over the price of what she calls Rani's "first sale" " the first time she will work as a prostitute. "This her hon…
One can count it as a missed opportunity that a show with the title "Power! Stokely Carmichael" tells us so little about the life of Stokely Carmichael, who was the activist credited with po…
After all those sequels and prequels and back stories based on "The Wizard of Oz" and "Peter Pan," isn't it time somebody did the same for "The Sound of Music"? Playwright Andrew Bergh remin…
The Fringe is HOT. Thanks to the heat wave that accompanied the opening weekend, this was literally true at the Fringe outdoor block party over the weekend, which offered teasers from a hand…
I hated Evan Zes even before I entered the theater to see his solo show, entitled "Rent Control," advertised as being about his true experiences making money off illegal sublets and A…
"The Gorges Motel" is a collection of nine sketches and vignettes, each written by one of six established playwrights, that all take place on the same day in a (presumably fictional) run-dow…
The Lunt-Fontanne Theater on Broadway is named after Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, renowned partners on stage in more than two dozen productions and married to one another for 55 years. Mar…
David Leeper, who plays five characters in a gay bar over five decades in "At The Flash," is an impressive mimic, the kind of quick-change artist that could surely do a credible job portrayi…
"Flight" turns out to be a sort of sequel to "The Little Prince" told through three acrobatic performers, who use their bodies to create characters and creatures and contrivances in clever a…
A program note by Maya Contreras, the playwright of "Let the Devil Take The Hindmost," explains that two specific days were significant in motivating her to write this play " the day that 12…
"I always wanted to be a headliner, not a headline," says the first dead black man in "Black Magic." "I'm sorry I got hit with more bullets than birthdays," says a…
“Something Rotten” recently replaced most of its principal cast– Will Chase is now the sexy William Shakespeare, Rob McClure and Josh Grisetti the  Bard-envious Bottom B…
How do you choose from 200 shows in two weeks (this year, August 12 to 28)? Practice. True, it can feel overwhelming to be one of 75,000 theatergoers attending the 2016 New York Internationa…
The 20th annual New York International Fringe Festival runs Friday, August 12h through Sunday, August 28th, 2016, with some 75,000 theatergoers expected for nearly 200 shows. (Enter th…
With the Bernie Sanders campaign removing the taint connected to the word "Socialism" for a new generation of American voters, it seems an inspired time for Edward Einhorn's stage adaptation…
Carlos D., the bass player for the rock band Interpol, left the group at age 26. Â He’s now re-emerged as a theater artist, with a new solo play about his (former) obsession with roc…
Below is the list of nominations for the 12th annual New York Innovative Theater Awards, which celebrates the best of the city’s independent theater  — aka Off-Off Broadway. H…
There is one moment of abrupt physical violence in "Quietly," but it comes near the beginning of Owen McCafferty's piercing drama about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and it is neither cl…
Should a work of theater be an entertainment that allows us to escape from the world, or a piece of art that more or less forces us to engage in the world? Can it do both? That’s the q…