One of the most exciting and important voices to emerge from the 1980s-90s American performance art movement, Karen Finley might be regarded as one of the country's most noted censored artis…
The late afternoon and early evening rain that had been steadily falling last Friday didn't stop the faithful from arriving at Central Park's Delacorte Theater for Shakespeare In The Park's …
'I sound like Borat and I look like Seinfeld,' jokes the Russian-accented illusionist Vitaly Beckman, who indeed sports a resemblance to 9th Avenue's most famous diner patron.
Coming in at the heels of landmark musicals like AIN'T SUPPOSED TO DIE A NATURAL DEATH and INNER CITY, composerlyricist Micki Grant's DON'T BOTHER ME, I CAN'T COPE was an important part of t…
Fans of late 16th Century pastoral poetic narrative tragicomedy have been all abuzz anticipating the Broadway arrival of the new song and dance adaptation of a Sir Philip Sidney classic. But…
There was plenty to admire when playwrightdirector Young Jean Lee's STRAIGHT WHITE MEN opened at The Public Theater in November of 2014. Those familiar with the exceedingly non-traditional w…
When the smash hit revue SMOKEY JOE'S CAFE, celebrating the pop classics of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, opened on Broadway in 1995, director Jerry Zaks staged each beloved number with sna…
'If life were only moments, then you'd never know you had one,' sings a character from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's INTO THE WOODS while pondering whether the intimate encounter she j…
It's a classically-styled cinematic pose. The kind that tends to define a certain era of film noir. A woman stands alone on the Coney Island boardwalk on a chilly day. Covered in a tan trenc…
The person seated in the back of the orchestra section on opening night of the Encores Off-Center concert mounting of GONE MISSING, who was loudly sobbing during the closing song, was by no …
'Now that the winter formal gives way to glorious spring fling,' recites our antihero at the outset of Mike Lew's enormously clever contemporary riff on Shakespeare's RICHARD III, titled Tee…
This is not shaping up to be a good year for Oscar Hammerstein II, American musical theatre's most important writer, who spent the first half of the 20th Century not only making significant …
'We're all fully interested in navigating this brave new world with them,' says an exasperated character in Jordan Harrison's comedy of social politics, Log Cabin, 'but it sometimes seems li…
Jason Robert Brown was just 25 years old when his SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD took the stage of Off-Broadway's intimate WPA Theatre. As he played piano and led the handful of musicians in director…
Perhaps some of the good people at Britain's Royal Court are in need of a hug these days. This week New York playgoers welcomed two transfers of exceedingly violent productions from that cel…
On the surface, the plot of CYPRUS AVENUE is just a little too weird to take seriously, and that's one of the strengths of David Ireland's creepy drama, as director Vicky Featherstone, Artis…
The existence of queer people of color, particularly of African descent, has repeatedly been washed over, or forgotten altogether, writes Donja R. Love, whose SUGAR IN OUR WOUNDS is receivin…
If upon entering a theatre, the stage is populated by a young black man sleeping under a street lamp as another young black man quietly scrutinizes all in attendance, while the pre-show musi…
David Friedman and Peter Kellogg may be billed, respectively, as composer and bookwriterlyricists of the rollickingly fun new musical comedy DESPERATE MEASURES, which has just moved from the…
Is there anything more charming than watching two older people falling in love Well, perhaps. Like when the romance occurs, as instructed by playwright Charles Mee in his 2001 one-act, FIRST…
From the very beginning, one of the most important tenants of Joseph Papp's vision of free Shakespeare in Central Park has been the insistence the company of actors audiences see on stage wi…
'We are women more willing to be vile receptacles then we are willing to be dead,' says a character identified as Item 2 in Eve Ensler's FRUIT TRILOGY, which is receiving its New York debut …
'Vassar. See yourself there,' a successful adult advises a high school student who has impressed him with her talent for writing poetry, but not with her low expectations for securing a spot…
Commencing in 1958, Chairman Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward was a 5-year plan to convert Communist China's largely agricultural economy into government-run farming collectives, freeing up r…
From the mid-1960s through to the early years of this century, the musicals scored by the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb have exemplified Broadway pizzazz while exploring darker issues und…