1,391 stories by "Tony Frankel"
WHEN CLOWNING, THERAPY, AND TRAUMA COLLIDE Rachel Troy's fierce, genre-breaking solo triumph is fully realized, ferociously smart, and genuinely exhilarating. I receive thousands of invitati…
REVENGE AS ENTERTAINMENT With Will Swenson and Lesli Margherita, La Mirada goes all in for this major revival Some shows you make time for. Others you plan around. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Ba…
A DELICIOUSLY VERY WRONG WAY TO CELEBRATE THE HOLIDAYS Santa's dead, the carols are cursed, and Zombie Joe wants your soul for Christmas If you survived Urban Death: Tour of Terror in Octobe…
HERBERT ROSS'S BOHÈME RETURNS Beauty polished, questions still lingering Puccini's tale may be endlessly familiar, yet the recent Los Angeles staging shows how even the most well-trodden …
A PRINCIPLED PRODUCTION Simon Stephens' deceptively simple romance finally reveals its cosmic heart in close quarters at Skylight Theatre Director Cameron Watson delivers a remarkably authen…
DON'T JEW HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO? {From the Archives " Back in 2010, when Facebook was still fun and Broadway still flirted with stereotypes like they were going out of style (which they…
CUTE MEETS CUTE, AGAIN Rendered with a rom-com frame around a night of emotional archaeology, Douglas Lyons's Table 17, briskly staged by Zhailon Levingston, wants to be irresistible, and fo…
A RIPPING GOOD YARN WITH A JOLLY GOOD CAST OPERATION MINCEMEAT EXTENDS ON BROADWAY When I first encountered Operation Mincemeat at Riverside Studios in London back in 2022, it was a scrappy,…
UNPLUGGED, UNFILTERED, AND UNMISSABLE A detonation of wit, soul, and Broadway voltage in this once-in-a-lifetime, one-night-only musical high-wire act The Wallis in Beverly Hills lays claim …
WHERE LONELINESS ECHOES AND CONSTELLATIONS ARE CALLING She gets up at dawn and is asleep by eight. She lives alone and doesn't like people. Nobody at the hospital (where she's worked for for…
GO ON AND BITE INTO THIS DONUT" YOU'VE EARNED IT It must have been quite a shock to Tracy Letts fans when Superior Donuts premiered at Steppenwolf in 2008. Chicago Theatre's favorite adopted…
THIS WAY TO THE AMERICAN DREAM" MIND THE TRAP DOORS Kafka's story still needs an ending, but Open Fist delivers a wildly inventive Amerika If you think America is in an existential crisis ri…
425 YEARS LATER, THE O.G. ROMCOM STILL CASTS A SPELL Writers Theatre in Glencoe, a charming North Shore Chicago suburb, has developed a reputation for impeccably produced theater of extremel…
A GREAT PREMISE GETS LOBOTOMIZED Laguna Playhouse offers a dazzling wall of doors and not much behind them Paul Slade Smith's new play Beside Myself arrives with a knockout premise: Gemma, a…
THE QUIET COST OF BELONGING Suh's Thanksgiving duet is lovely and lived-in, but leaves one wishing for deeper stakes The Heart Sellers at South Coast Rep offers a focused, uninterrupted glim…
SWEET, CHARMING, AND BRIMMING WITH LIFE, HELLO, DOLLY! IS MUSICAL COMEDY HEAVEN It's always extraordinary to hear a live orchestra in a musical these days " a rare and exhilarating luxury th…
THE BRIDGE FROM THE GREAT WHITE WAY TO TINSELTOWN AND BACK AGAIN The New York Pops' concert From Stage to Screen at Carnegie Hall promised a night of crossover magic last Friday"songs that l…
WHEN INTROSPECTION FLATLINES: DAVID ROUSSEVE'S BECOMING DADDY AF IS MORE LIKE WTF After more than twenty years away from full-length solo work, choreographer and storyteller David Roussève …
A KNOCKOUT OF CONSCIENCE NOW BECOMES A STREAM OF CONSCIENCE Stage and Cinema called the visceral and relevant Broadway hit Punch "a knockout of conscience." Now, Manhattan Theatre Club is gi…
A GHOST STORY THAT EXPLAINS ITSELF TO DEATH It's 2012 in Sherman Oaks, CA, when Thai-American life-insurance salesman Max (David Huynh) begins sleepwalking and violently lashes out at his pr…
A KILLER REVIVAL Drury Lane's Dial M for Murder may be set in 1950s London, but under Adam Immerwahr's taut direction, the suspense feels freshly sharpened. Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher's adap…
READY FOR A SWIFT MOVE? Veronica Electrifies the Pacific Jazz Orchestra Gala The Pacific Jazz Orchestra opens its 2025"26 season with a night that promises both elegance and swing: an intima…
A NEWFOUND(LAND) WAY OF LOOKING AT MUSICAL THEATER It's always a joy " and a rarity " to see a musical I've witnessed before reemerge as something fresher than the first time I saw it. Such …
REVELLING IN RAVEL AND A RAPTUROUS CARMEN The Chicago Symphony Orchestra opened its late-September program tonight with a shimmering palette of sound while offering many chances for the play…
WEST SIDE SNORING Astoundingly unsatisfying, LA Opera's many-headed Hydra production of West Side Story, directed with no sense of urgency by Francesca Zambello, opened tonight to a crowd la…
