Book review by Samuel L. Leiter Casual notes on show-biz books, memoirs and studies, dust gatherers, and hot off the presses. David Armstrong. Broadway Nation: How Immigrants, Jewish, Que…
Icke, Strong, and Manville update Sophocles for a modern political tragedy. In 1959, Elmer Rice wrote Cue for Passion, a Broadway play that adapted Shakespeare's Hamlet into contemp…
Review by Ron Fassler . . . Sometimes a play begins and within minutes you can tell that you're in the hands of a playwright, director and cast that are not only on the same page but have do…
Laurie Metcalf as Sarah and Micah Stock as Ethan in "Little Bear Ridge Road" (photo by Julia Cervantes).November 13, 2025: Theatre Yesterday and Today, by Ron Fassler. In 1984, I attended…
Review by Ron Fassler . . . Now in its 55th year, the 92NY Lyrics & Lyricists Series is as essential to New York City as such other venerable institutions as Shakespeare in the Park and …
Mike Nichols and Neil Simon in an empty theatre in the 1960s, eyes forward towards the stage.November 7, 2025: Theatre Yesterday and Today, by Ron Fassler. Mike Nichols, born ninety-fo…
Review by Ron Fassler . . . While sitting through Kyoto, which opened this week at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, I couldn't help being reminded of several other recent plays best described …
Review by Ron Fassler . . . When George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion first premiered in London in 1914, it boasted two of the greatest stars of the British Theatre as its leads: Herbert Be…
By Ron Fassler . . . I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Linda Purl, an actress and singer with decades in the business. Her resume includes starring in over 45 made-for-TV movie…
Review by Ron Fassler . . . "This is a play about my mother. For my mother. Who recently . . . who's not here anymore. And so, it's about her, and her friends, her beautiful friends"and a th…
Review by Ron Fassler . . . Oscar Hammerstein II's words to Jerome Kern's melody "The Song is You," could have been written to perfectly describe the songstress Marilyn Maye: Beautiful rhaps…
Review by Samuel L. Leiter . . . Art of Leaving is the unpropitious title of an amateurish new domestic comedy by Anne Marilyn Lucas, whose cardboard dialogue and plywood acting had me po…
Review by Ron Fassler . . . The 34-year-old Ari'el Stachel is blessed with charm for days. Anyone who saw his Tony Award-winning performance in The Band's Visit were enchanted by his i…
Review by Ron Fassler . . . Eleven months ago, the City Center Annual Gala Presentation of Ragtime, minimally staged by director Lear DeBessonet, received excellent reviews (mine am…
By Alex Eichholz . . . ​For a show that opens with the line "Prepare to be GOOPED!", I was neither gooped nor gagged by Gwyneth Goes Skiing, which opened tonight at SoH…
Sam Robards, Victoria Clarke, Camila Canó-Flaviá, and Will Harrison in "Punch" (photo by Matthew Murphy).October 13, 2025: Theatre Yesterday and Today, by Ron Fassler If you've n…
Review by Ron Fassler . . . It is with only a fleeting awareness of her media persona that I attended The Least Problematic Woman in the World, Dylan Mulvaney's solo autobiographical p…
Review by Ron Fassler . . . When the lights go up on Preston Max Allen's new play Caroline, which opened tonight at off-Broadway's MCC Theater, we see a 28-year-old mother (Chloë Grace…
Review by Ron Fassler . . . The one time I attended Scotland's Edinburgh Fringe Festival was forty years ago. I saw play after play and was charmed by much of the theatre, though a bit surpr…
Review by Alex Eichholz . . . Whether you're in the front pew every Sunday or you've never set foot in a chapel, you must let the dazzling company of the new musical Saturday Church, which o…
By Samuel L. Leiter . . . New York has a number of institutions part of whose function is to introduce the artistic expressions of a particular national culture. I don't know of any that, ov…
Robert Redford (1936"2025).September 16, 2025: Theatre Yesterday and Today, by Ron Fassler. Robert Redford died early this morning at age eighty-nine. A major film actor, his star never d…
Review by Ron Fassler . . . The last time I attended a production of Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck, was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music forty-eight years ago. The second time, in a full c…
Review by Stuart Miller . . . The Brothers Size is a transportive meditation on siblings, the way they can (and can't) protect or hurt each other and on how if you live with your head in the…
By Ron Fassler . . . Although Avery Sommers is coming to town doesn't quite scan the same as Santa Claus is coming to town, the talented singer/actress will undoubtedly be spreadin…