ALL ABOUT EVE… WITH JAZZ HANDS Bruce Kimmel’s affectionate revival proves that a sturdy backstage classic and a committed cast can still earn plenty of applause, even when there are rese…
A PILL THAT’S HARD TO SWALLOW Chance Theater’s committed cast sells the songs in this jukebox musical, but can’t overcome a sprawling script When Alanis Morissette released Jagged Litt…
SEXY, SINCERE… AND SLIGHT Outstanding chemistry can’t quite compensate for an opera that compresses too much Andy Acosta has sung Timothy Laughlin enough that the role has started to fee…
NO STRINGS ATTACHED? THINK AGAIN Erik Patterson’s provocative world premiere boasts superb performances but mistakes repetition for depth In F**king Strangers, receiving its world premiere…
WHAT THE MUSIC BOX REMEMBERS A lavish production overcomes a book that never fully solves its own mystery A music box opens. A grandmother sings a lullaby to a five-year-old girl who will sp…
BALANCHINE IN A BOX ACB proves intimacy can be both an asset and a liability George Balanchine said he needed nothing but a stage, some light, and dancers. He also had the New York City Ball…
PEOPLE WHO NEED PEOPLE (TO MIND THE STORE) Michael Mullen shines in Jonathan Tolins’ affectionate backstage fantasy Jonathan Tolins built his 2013 solo play around one of the stranger fact…
CONLON’S LAST SPELL A beloved production returns as James Conlon brings his remarkable LA Opera tenure to a close James Conlon walked to the podium last Saturday night and the house was on…
LONG-DISTANCE DAMAGE Samuel D. Hunter finds devastating intimacy across thousands of miles Sam Shepard built True West on a kitchen and two brothers who could not stay out of each other’s …
A COUNTERTENOR WHO KNOWS WHERE THE POWER LIVES Key’mon Murrah and Les Talens Lyriques turn familiar Handel into something freshly urgent The program announced the obvious: nine arias from …
EMPIRE STATE OF MIND A rare jukebox musical that finds fresh life by letting the songs tell the story A jukebox musical is an inheritance. Someone else wrote the songs, lived the life, banke…
SLIGHTLY TOO BIG FOR HIS WORLD Eboni Booth’s Pulitzer-winning drama offers comfort, compassion, and just enough unease beneath the surface A bell rings before the lights come up. Out of th…
THE JOINT IS JUMPIN’, IT’S REALLY JUMPIN’ Ebony Rep finds the joy, sorrow, and swing hidden inside Fats Waller’s enduring revue Ain’t Misbehavin’ does not tell the story of Fats …
PULLED OUT OF MYTH AND INTO THE HEADLINES Kenneth Cavander relocates Thebes to a near-future America, and something is lost in the move I first read Antigone in a basement college classroom …
LORCA IN DRAG, WITH HIS CLAWS INTACT Rodrigo García and Ugho Badú reimagine a Spanish classic without dulling its edge Lorca wrote for women’s voices and then watched the world go silent…
BRIGADOON EARNS ITS MIRACLE Pasadena Playhouse’s revelatory new production treats Lerner and Loewe’s fable not as nostalgia, but as a question of faith, sacrifice, and survival Dormancy …
The Salon at the End of the Century: The Cardinal Assumption of Dark Library H.G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1895, The Island of Doctor Moreau in 1896, The Invisible Man in 1897, an…
THE COST OF STAYING A rigorously observed production that grips in silence, even as the play leans toward explanation There is a language people invent when citizenship can vanish with a kno…
THE HOUSE THAT BUILT YOU A sweeping, structurally ambitious play that grips in the moment even as it searches for its final form There is a moment near the end of the first act of Fremont Av…
DON’T BLAME MILLENNIALS: MILLENNIALS ARE KILLING MUSICALS IS KILLING MUSICALS (OR, WHEN SATIRE EATS ITSELF) An exhausting, vulgar, and unfocused musical that mistakes noise for insight and…
CRITICISM VS CONFESSION When analysis starts to look like refusal Editor’s note: Jesse Green was reassigned from his role as chief theatre critic at The New York Times in 2025 and now serv…
A HUNGER THAT DOESN’T QUITE NAME ITSELF A sharp new play still discovering its center Lewis Carroll understood that eating is never just eating. When Alice stands before the small cake and…
THE LAST FOOL A master’s final shrug lands with surprising weight Verdi was seventy-nine when Falstaff premiered at La Scala in 1893. He had not written a comic opera since Un giorno di re…
A HELL OF A MOUTHFUL A play where grief, faith, and ambition collide —and silence carries the weight Jacobson knows that the domestic and the exalted do not occupy different rooms. Hell Mo…
TWO VOICES, ONE VOLTAGE An evening of operatic power finds its charge in connection, not just scale BroadStage does not often present evenings of this ambition: a sold-out house, a freelance…