166 stories by "Matthew Westphal"
As desperate refugees fleeing African and Middle Eastern war zones drown in the Mediterranean and flood Italy, Greece, and Malta, a director uses Syracuse’s ancient Greek amphitheater …
“Taymor’s film reveals more of the spectacle than any one spectator at the theater could have seen. Nonetheless a filmed version of a stage production cannot quite capture the se…
Darko Tresnjak: “Taming of the Shrew is designed to give uproarious pleasure over the subjugation of a woman. In Kiss Me, Kate, she is an equal-opportunity offender. We made sure that …
The case of Double Falsehood and the search for “function words.”
No, we don’t mean live sex shows. This is all about a spate of recent plays about the effects that widely available porn is having on our society.
Steven Berkoff: “Again, one suffers the bilge of a critic who in reviewing Othello warbles happily how fortunate we are, that actors no longer black up. As if that’s all there is…
“Probably the closest thing you can compare it to is the fighting in ice hockey. Think about it: an activity somehow both integral and non-essential that many in the audience consider …
“In the beginning, there was Twitter. David Javerbaum – a seasoned comedy writer for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report who has won Peabodys, Emmys, and a Grammy – start…
“The cloak and dagger nature of trying to see a play in one of Europe’s most authoritarian nations is to be mirrored in the UK as part of Belarus Free Theatre’s 10th annive…
“The Tony Award for best new musical … is likely to be a major turning point, allowing the production to reach new markets, and new audiences, that might have been initially put …
“The show, which began previews on March 26 and opened April 23, has been a box office disappointment but a passion project for its producers and investors, who worked for more than a …
Michel Houellebecq’s “Elementary Particles “has nothing to do with Islam. But that didn’t stop [Dubrovnik] Festival organizers from removing it from the lineup when a…
“The exploitation of actresses – and actors – is not confined to Hollywood. Equity, the UK actors’ union, is receiving ever more complaints and has established a work…
Manchester’s Flare festival invited The New Collective, a young group based in Tbilisi, to perform next month. “But the British authorities are so concerned that this young colle…
“The week of the Drama Leagues is the peak of what publicist Chris Boneau calls ‘the month of hate,’ a post-nomination frenzy leading up to the Tonys on June 7.” Here…
Mark Shenton of The Stage selects some no-brainers (Sweeney Todd, A Chorus Line), some head-scratchers (Pippin?), some obscure-to-Yanks titles (what’s The Hired Man?), and some appalli…
“Off Broadway hit Hamilton and Tony contender The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time topped the 2015 Drama Desk Awards, with Hamilton taking seven awards including the title…
“Tour guides had been preparing to stage a day of strike action on June 1, following previous industrial action on May 18. The guides have been seeking an increase to their pay since a…
“In the fall, the four-year-old Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training” – operated by Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company – “and the Univer…
“Many theater owners like to say they offer an intimate show but only one really means it. That would be Theatre for One – a 4-foot-by-8 foot portable theater that allows one aud…
“The Elementary Particles, a new stage work adapted from [Michel] Houellebecq’s own 1998 novel, was set to play at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival in July. … A spokeswoman fo…
“It’s the energy of the building that has the potential to bring Shakespeare to life. It’s the shared space, the triple-galleried cockpit, the restless crowd, the direct ad…
Michael Billington: “In fact, Spacey … has done everything possible to restore the fortunes of the Old Vic. He has given the theatre stability and, through his presence as an act…
“I sincerely believed that I was going to be South Africa’s first literary redundancy. But as it is, South Africa caught me by surprise again and just said, ‘No, you’…
“That publicist, Marc Thibodeau, who had been hired to help bring to Broadway the gothic musical based on the Daphne du Maurier novel, had sent foreboding emails under phony names to a…
