1,084 stories by "Matthew Murray"
The Astoria Performing Arts Center is putting on an exuberant and engaging production of Galt MacDermot and William Dumaresq's rarely seen 1983 musical, The Human Comedy.
In the category of contemporary plays better known by their revivals than by their original productions, John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves is a sapphire-encrusted headliner. Though the 1…
Nina Arianda's performance as Billie Dawn, the deceptive ditz who's the driving force of Garson Kanin's comedy Born Yesterday, is not notable for being this young actress's stunning New York…
With the possible exception of Satan, the Seven Deadly Sins have no more passionate champion than Johnny "Rooster" Byron. The buoyant free spirit at the center of Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem…
What if your big break came and you blew it? That's one of the more unsettling questions at the center of Christopher Shinn's new play, Picked, which just opened at the Vineyard Theatre, as …
When a stage adaptation of a pre-existing work fizzles, it's typically because it hasn't adequately captured the spirit or the necessity of its source. Whether or not it's otherwise faithful…
In High, Matthew Lombardo's new play at the Booth, everyone is addicted to something. But perhaps none of those addictions is more pervasive — or, simultaneously, more destructive and more…
Thank goodness for John Tenniel. The drawings of the veteran illustrator, which video and projection designer Sven Ortel has adopted and adapted for Wonderland's house curtain at the Marriot…
Forging a transformative emotional connection with a character in a play is one of the most exciting and seldom-experienced events that can happen at the theatre. Rarer still is doing so whe…
Call the play weird if you want " and you probably should " but that doesn't stop it from being sensible, funny, and legitimately moving.
"One man's facts are another man's fabrications," says a character early in Mona Mansour's new play Urge for Going, which has just opened at The Public Theater as part of its Public LAB deve…
Sixties camp may have soared in the 2002 Broadway musical Hairspray, but that’s not why it ran over six years.
"You know what the pulse of the city is?" "A busy signal?" This exchange, between uptight free spirit Marta and confirmed bachelor Robert, perfectly encapsulates the experience that is the N…
You appreciate Porter's artistry all the more because of how little is evident elsewhere whenever the songs recede.
When Tomei and Whaley are left alone to portray opposite poles in the eternal quest for meaning in a meaningless world, their pain becomes yours. When they're not, their existence becomes pa…
The trouble with invoking ghosts is that you can't always control whom they haunt. With his new musical-theatre bio-show, One Night with Fanny Brice, which just opened at St. Luke's Theatre,…
It doesn't say anything new, and it doesn't say much in ways you've never heard before. But it also doesn't absorb cynicism or complaints. It's a show so gentle, so nice, and so enveloping i…
With the help of Mantello, Metcalf, and everyone else involved, The Other Place takes you to another place: that transcendent level you can only reach in the theatre when the heart, mind, ne…
The charm and theatricality of neither the work nor this mounting have been amplified, and as headed by Fierstein and Christopher Sieber, respectively in the roles of Albin and Georges, the …
But like his first show, Sleepwalk with Me, which opened Off-Broadway in 2008, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend is most concerned with showing off this outstanding comic to the best of his consider…
Radcliffe may not be a natural song-and-dance man, but he delivers the goods with a flair that catapults him past many of his more experienced cast mates.
That it isn't as good as Parker and Stone are capable of isn't merely a missed opportunity " it's a colossal letdown.
Who says you can't pick your family? The ten characters in Bathsheba Doran's marvelous new play Kin, which just opened at Playwrights Horizons, prove that everyone does exactly that.
In rethinking it, especially for the new revival that just opened at the Theatre at St. Clement's, all director Wackerman and his collaborators have managed to do is break it in new and usua…
