1,084 stories by "Matthew Murray"
"On-tray!"
As a number of Broadway shows learned this past season, working from behind a framing device or other concept is dramatically dangerous—and challenging for writers to get right.
"... makes you want to insert one or two more quarters to have a more satisfying experience ..."
Is it a good or a bad thing when those awash in the waves of history seem to be drowning?
Fat Camp is big fun
"... the opening scenes of Tony Speciale's new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Classic Stage Company look like a raging downer."
The Drama Desk Awards decided to drop its traditional Best Orchestration category this year—and Broadway's orchestrators, musicians, and composers are fighting back.
With all the references to revivals scattered throughout Leap of Faith, you may be excused for temporarily forgetting the people onstage are talking about religious meetings instead of theat…
In the gallery of lightning-fast costume changes this season (and the last few seasons, too), none stands out as strongly as the one that occurs just before intermission in Don't Dress for D…
The Columnist ... is many things, but above all it's an escape drama.
Walking into Carnegie Hall on Tuesday evening for the one-night-only concert performance of The Sound of Music there, I was more than a little skeptical about what I was going to see. Though…
Everything you need to know about Nice Work If You Can Get It, the musical that just opened at the Imperial, may be gleaned from, of all things, its show curtain.
Given its firm reliance on violence, treachery, sex, and jazz, you'd expect the new musical The City Club, which just opened at the Minetta Lane Theatre, to be smoldering almost nonstop.
Think you know everything possible about the endlessly kvetching Jewish mother? Think again.
I believe in Ghost.
The crafters of fully realized and successful artistic works in any medium have one very simple and inarguable reason for neglecting no detail in their pursuit of truth: because everything m…
Clybourne Park continues to work because its underlying assumptions about who the most accepting are, and just how seriously they take their tolerance, always seem to be correct.
"... this comedy is as intense " and funny " as it gets."
Ninth and Joanie is " in this staging, at any rate " the rare play that gets everything wrong.
For theatre lovers, NBC's Smash should be one of the most exciting TV series in decades. So why isn't it?
From the moment you enter the upstairs theater at the Culture Project, where the world premiere production of Tennessee Williams's final play In Masks Outrageous and Austere just opened, you…
Despite a pedigree that would seem to make it a must-see ... this show is an intricately carved catastrophe.
For the six actors in Magic/Bird, the new play by Robert Simonson that just opened at the Longacre, the first scene must provide a head-to-toe thrill.
Why did the recent Off-Broadway revival of Carrie fail? Easy: Lack of blood.
The lesson of Eva Perón, who spent her short life walking the line between beloved and infamous, is that even unnoticeable people can accomplish great things.
