No Broadway show in recent memory elicited a more potent blend of scapegoating and Schadenfreude than Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which was conceived in 2002 by producer Tony Adams, score…
As the lights come up on the first scene, a young man with a bum leg and his stronger, abler friend awaken to greet another gray, dirty summer morning on the Bowery. From the rooftop they've…
In John Patrick Shanley's Outside Mullingar, BrÃan F. O'Byrne plays a pathologically shy, quietly quirky farmer named Anthony, whose family farm abuts the one owned by Rosemary's family. …
Hi, all:I thought I'd tip you off, if you are interested, to a lively, interesting, and occasionally maddening discussion that was sparked a few weeks ago by an essay titled "Critical Genero…
Photo: Gerry GoodsteinWhen I was a kid, my parents took my sister and me to a lot of theater in our hometown of Pittsburgh, which has a much stronger arts scene than I think most people assu…
Joan MarcusThe composer Jeanine Tesori has a knack for capturing, in her scores, the ebbs and flows of complex, imbalanced relationships. Through recurring motifs, overlapping melodic lines,…
Hi, all. It's been a very long semester and I've seen very little theater, and I've missed blogging a bunch. I plan to rectify that starting....now:Last night, along with, um, everyone, I go…
Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play is not warm or fuzzy or uplifting or heartbreaking. Its characters are not especially finely wrought or deeply nuanced, and do not Learn…
Kafka's The Metamorphosis is, for all its terse language, sparse emotional display, and brevity, a tale with some pretty huge themes about family dynamics, the personal and professional worl…
Soul Doctor is not the greatest show on the planet, for sure, but it's certainly not the worst, either--and while there are problems with the show that have been cited repeatedly by critics …
My ten-year-old daughter, a native New Yorker, is occasionally bummed that we don't have space for a dog, that she has to share a bedroom with her little brother, and that we don't yet let h…
When Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford's musical I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road opened at the Public in 1978, the theater critics who reviewed it were hostile. (The enormo…
Hi:There will be more theater reviews from me in the coming weeks (whether you want them or not!). In the meantime, I wanted to share the fact that the American Music Review newsletter, whic…
About two years ago, I resolved to refuse, on principle, to see any stage musical that was originally a movie. I've decided to back down from this noble (read: foolhardy) sacrifice in recent…
Photo: Sara Krulwich Immersive theater is hot in New York right now, but that doesn't mean you should always believe the hype. I've seen a bunch of shows that employ immersive…
1) The Tonys are the honeybadger of awards shows. They don't give a shit, they have loose skin, and they are absolutely, completely, and totally badass.2) Neil Patrick Harris should host eve…
Murder Ballad, which is currently running at the Union Square Theater after a critically and commercially successful stint at MTC earlier this fall, is everything everyone says it is: paper …
Howdy, people:Some of you might know this, and some of you could probably not care less, but anyway, sometimes I write for the Oxford University Press blog, since OUP published Hard Times an…
Joan MarcusThis past theater season has been a real roller coaster for me, reception-wise. I saw Kinky Boots begrudgingly, and in a monumentally horrible mood, and seriously out for blood,…
Experimental approaches to well-known plays can sometimes pay off in enormous ways. The National Theatre of Scotland's production of Macbeth, currently at the Barrymore, made me think of a w…
Photo: Michael J. Lutch Allow me to cut right to the chase: Diane Paulus's revival of Pippin, which opens Thursday, is sublime. At the risk of sounding cliched, there are just not enou…
Photo Credit: Bruce GlikasYoung Charlie Price (Stark Sands) of Northampton, England, has just unwillingly inherited his family's struggling shoe factory. His girlfriend wants him to sell it …
Hey, fellow theater geeks. Do you remember a time, not so long ago, when "Smash" was a brilliant, highly anticipated idea? OMG, a show that finally shows the whole world how cool and edgy an…
1) I have not set foot in a movie theater in a full calendar year, at least.2) Nonetheless, missing the awards telecast was simply not a possibility.3) Seth McFarlane is cute, charming, and …
Photo Credit: Broadwayworld.com"My name is Asher Lev!" The title of the 1972 Chaim Potok novel, and the Aaron Posner play based upon it is, when uttered by the title character, no mere how-d…