1,084 stories by "Matthew Murray"
For their first musical together at The Public Theater in 2013, Here Lies Love, David Byrne and Alex Timbers (working with Fatboy Slim) chose Imelda Marcos to anchor a disco-fueled swirl thr…
Of all the irresistible forces in the universe, progress may be the toughest to slow down.
Has devolution ever appeared more terrifying - or more vital - onstage than it does in The Emperor Jones?
For many Americans - and undoubtedly for many New Yorkers - memories of September 11, 2001, still sting.
Few next-generation directors have proven their understanding of understatement better than Sam Gold.
The Outer Space, the new concert-musical by Ethan Lipton that just opened at Joe's Pub, turns on a familiar axiom: "Things are the same all over."
Can someone who's truly deprived of joy give it abundantly to others?
Love and sex are complicated at any age, but they're especially so for adolescents who lack the experience, wisdom, and good judgment needed to properly wrangle their simmering feelings.
Is it written somewhere that we can only learn from the past by filtering it through the present?
If you're familiar with Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the 1979 musical by Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim, you're probably inclined (with good reason) to not be in the mo…
You've undoubtedly heard that those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Invisibility? I can't see it. Not that I'm contesting it's an issue for women "of a certain age" - in this case, over 50 - but that Janie Dee is a woman who demands, even needs, to be seen w…
The Penitent, the new play by David Mamet at the Atlantic Theater Company, is a stylish and sharp-looking stab at issues that rarely arise in New York theatre today.
I'd love to tell you what Wakey, Wakey, which just opened at the Pershing Square Signature Center, is about, but it ain't easy.
An artist whose brilliance goes unheralded because of other people's inability to put him into any of their conventional boxes?
From the Nazi occupation of Germany (Cabaret) and the toxic relationship between murder and celebrity (Chicago) to tortured sexuality amid just plain torture (Kiss of the Spider Woman) and e…
Some things are just too terrible to say, invoking horrifying ghosts and suggesting blood-curdling motives even if the underlying intentions are pure (or something close it, at any rate).
Should Death really be so appealing?
Enemies are not hard to come by, if only you know where to look.
Theatre is a notoriously chatty medium, and those who create it - and, let's face it, those who watch it - are usually unable to keep their mouths shut.
A man desperately searching for answers but encountering only silence in response to his pleas is the central issue of Tracy Letts's play Man From Nebraska, which just opened at Second Stage…
A politically and economically ravaged dystopia, divided into "districts" that are presided over by lord-like dictators who luxuriate in comfort and wealth while everyone below them is barel…
The scenic backdrop for the City Center Encores! concert of Big River, which is playing through this weekend, is a black-and-white photo of the Mississippi River that's about as expansive an…
The old axiom that one person's trash is another person's treasure is beautifully illustrated by most of The Object Lesson, a kind of theatrical art installation by Geoff Sobelle that just o…
Silent film star Norma Desmond learns the hard way that remaining a legend isn't easy,
