311 stories by "Philip"
Think about the last ten new plays you saw. Were most of them really well written, with cohesive plots and well-developed characters? Were they thought-provoking and/or amusing? Well, that a…
In years past I have seen several plays performed in foreign (to me) languages. "Death of a Salesman" and "Fiddler on the Roof," both familiar works, were perfectly clear in Yiddish, while I…
Vivian Bearing, PhD, a college professor of 17th-Century poetry, specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, is undergoing chemotherapy for stage-four metastatic ovarian cancer. Fifty ye…
Theater lore abounds with tales of understudies who have gone on to a degree of stardom, some as a direct result of having filled in for an indisposed performer. Shirley Maclaine, who subbed…
Several terrific performances in the current Broadway revival of "Company" owe their provenance to its gender-switched casting. Originally about NYC bachelor Robert/Bobby being feted on his …
How do you improve on perfection? Well, you can't " by definition. But you can approach it from a different direction, which is what David Lindsay-Abaire has done in adapting his marvelous 2…
All eleven outstanding onstage performers (six singer-dancers and five musicians) are at the top of their game, but the biggest stars of "Cheek to Cheek: Irving Berlin in Hollywood" are the …
At the intermission of "Morning's at Seven," directed by Dan Wackerman in revival at the Theatre of St. Clement's, I mentioned to my companion that Paul Osborne's 1940 comedy, which I had re…
The Axelrod Performing Arts Center in Deal Park, New Jersey has emerged from Covid lockdown with a stylish and engaging production of "A Bronx Tale," the full-scale musical version of Chazz …
It is no knock on A. R. Gurney's much-admired "Love Letters" to note that "Ken Ludwig's Dear Jack, Dear Louise" takes Gurney's premise and runs with it…literally. Gurney has a man and a wo…
In his very fine book "A Lifetime with Shakespeare" (McFarland), about having directed all of Shakespeare's plays, the late Paul Barry postulated that casting is eighty-five percent of d…
Henry VIII wasted no time embarking on his multiple-marriage mission. Just weeks after assuming the English throne at age 19 in 1509, he wed number one of six, Catherine of Aragon, his older…
When's the last time you heard a Dumb Blond joke? Me neither, until Robert Dubac pulled one early in "The Book of Moron," his solo comedic commentary in a limited engagement through October …
Tradition holds that Queen Elizabeth I, enamored of Sir John Falstaff from Shakespeare's Henry IV plays, asked the playwright to depict that character in love, and that he complied, writing …
In calendar year 2014 I saw four different productions of Shakespeare's "King Lear." In all of them, and six or eight others over the years, Lear and his daughter Cordelia [spoiler alert] di…
As 'S Wonderful as "Who Could Ask for Anything More? The Songs of George Gershwin" is as it stands, and it truly is, I would suggest one change: adding George's principal lyricist, his broth…
Considering, as Rehena Mirza's disembodied voice intones in her segment of "A Dozen Dreams," that nothing is more boring than hearing about someone else's dream, you would think a gaggle of …
What might you be doing one month past your ninety-first birthday? For John Cullum, who achieved that milestone in March, the answer was a sort of fallback plan: Two years earlier, the vener…
The 1955 Broadway musical "Damn Yankees" was based on Douglass Wallop's novel "The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant" (to the lowly Washington Senators). A Broadway revival of "Damn Yankees"…
Anyone interested in learning how to turn a negative into a positive might want to contact the folks at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. For the past nine years, BSC's …
A play-writing recipe: Stir together equal parts racial tension, economic uncertainty, labor-management unrest, and class distinction. Fold in a smattering of unprovoked violence. Bake under…
In the recent months that restrictions have eased in some relatively low-affected areas, I have tracked down three theatrical attractions (all with COVID-19 protocols in place). In August it…
I have long been aware of the existence of Hudson Guild Theatre Company, but until I was encouraged to watch their virtual world-premiere production of "A Five Mile Radius," I had never seen…
Having performed years ago in theaters tucked away in tourism towns across the country, my very first sighting of Weathervane Theatre in Whitefield, New Hampshire inspired a déjà vu rush…
"Not to put any pressure on you, but the entire American theater is depending on you to be smart." Thus spoke Kate Shindle, president of Actors Equity, to the cast of "Godspell," the first l…
