112 stories by "The Playgoer"
So who ruled that all plays must be 2 to 3 hours, anyway?
As cultural consumption increasingly focuses on smaller and smaller forms of entertainment--IPod-able songs, YouTube vids, E-reader…
A philanthropy watchdog group reports that "billions of dollars in arts funding is serving a mostly wealthy, white audience that is shrinking while only a small chunk of money goes to emer…
Times critic Charles Isherwood today finally addresses the long obvious, barely under the surface tension between him and playwright Adam Rapp, whose work he has consistently, um...disliked.…
"When you're grossing $700,000 a week, which is not bad, and losing money, there is a problem."
-Billy Elliot lead producer Eric Fellner on why he's decided to quit while he's ahead an…
Ok, not quite riots.
Three women and six teenage girls were escorted from the theater during intermission of "Newsies" on Thursday night, after patrons complained about a scuffle an…
Rob Kendt in Time Out clears up some misconceptions about The Threepenny Opera on the eve of the sold-out(!) run at BAM next week of Robert Wilson's staging with the Berliner Ensemble.
In fa…
I imagine David Cote's expression of National Theatre-envy got a friendly reception on the UK's Guardian website. And I totally am with him on the sentiment--namely that the thing to envy mo…
Declan Kiberd reminds us why Synge's Playboy of the Western World, now a cozy mainstay of the repertory, was once the most shocking play Ireland had ever seen:
Ireland in 1907 saw …
Playwriting class at the New School for Social Research, New York, circa 1941. At left: Tennessee Williams. At right: Arthur Miller.
I'm back in print this week with a review in Time Out of Seed, courtesy of Classical Theatre of Harlem and Hip Hop Theatre Fest.
Not seedy, I'll say that much.
Typical of overreacting school boards...
The Associated Press reports that the Richland School District in Johnstown, PA, canceled its February 2012 production of Kismet following concerns…
So what do we think of Signature's announcement of five playwright residencies?
Annie Baker, Will Eno, Katori Hall, Kenneth Lonergan, and Regina Taylor [will] be charter members of a progra…
-Riedel surveys the Broadway trend of touching up (and dumbing down?) already-running big shows for the tourists. As with Billy Elliot, these seem to be mostly cases of translation from Engl…
"Every time I see some kid on the subway watching The Godfather on his iPod, I think, 'Fuck it, I want to do a play.'"
-Ethan Hawke
Some video on the new Porgy and Bess out of Boston. (And pace Riedel, it is still coming to Broadway.)
It's from WGBH's "Greater Boston" tv show. Full 30-minute(!) segment here, but this pa…
After a near collapse of the finish of their '09-'10 season, Roundabout Theatre has stumbled into another programming embarrassment right out of the gate this year. (I guess big cheese Todd …
Guardian's Molly Flat celebrates the theatre's unique showcasing of the gifts of older actors:
Theatre, largely unbound by Hollywood's obsession with youth, has always been a good place t…
"I am deeply honored by this news, and wish my mother and father were alive to hear it!...All that education, allowance, tuition, voice lessons, summer jobs, scholarship application deadli…
Unless you retreated into a total theatre news blackout in August, you probably have heard about (or even read) Stephen Sonhdeim's snarky takedown of the team behind the new "revised" and Br…
While I've been away I did some writing for American Theatre's special feature marking the Tennessee Williams centennial. You'll have to buy the print mag to read my overview of some recent …
Yes, I'm on a blog "sabbatical," but I simply must mark the passing of that great stage actor, John Wood, who served as veritable muse to Tom Stoppard and other 60s & 70s British stage a…
Apologies for being AWOL the last few days. I realize it's probably time for my usual August break anyway. So I will lay low for the next few weeks and hopefully return here by the end…
Two critics check out some big North American theatre fests.
London's Michael Billington travels to Canada to check out Stratford and Shaw--and is very pleasantly surprised!
San Francisco'…
"I put thirty-four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can't pay my insurance. You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away--a man is not a piece of fruit!"
-Willy Loman, Death of a…
Spiderman: Turn Off the Darkphoto: Sara Krulwich, New York Times
Makes the show look exciting, huh?
