ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF A PLAY Anarchy is not chaos. The former means "without law" and the latter means "without form." This is an important distinction to consider in a play that intends to ma…
TOO BAD THEY DIDN'T RAISE THE RENT Rent has a romantic history: Jonathan Larson, its author and composer, died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm on Jan. 25, 1996, 10 days before his 36th birthd…
KITTY LITTER If I had my way, the slogan for Cats would be changed from "Now and Forever" to "Not Now, Not Ever." Even when I saw the show back in the early 80s and again in the early 90s, I…
HARRY POTTER AND THE RECYCLED RECORDING ENGINEER Jack Thorne's immensely popular two-part play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, has taken up residence in London, New York, and Melbourne, …
A YES AND NO NANETTE When the 1925 musical No, No, Nanette was revised and remounted in 1971, it was predicted to be a flop by folks in the Biz, but it was the buzz of the season with nostal…
WE'RE STILL WAITING You're watching a play but you have no idea what's happening. There is no plot, the dialogue is gobbledygook, and characters are filled with despair, yet you are told tha…
LOVE CONQUERS COMMON SENSE My takeaway about Oscar Wilde in David Hare's intellectually stimulating but overly static play of ideas, The Judas Kiss, now at Boston Court, is this: The literar…
CRIPPLE THE FUN Funny and heartbreaking, Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan is nothing less than a slalom run of emotional ups and downs and plot twists and turns. Antaeus Theatre's …
WITNESSING UGANDA IS AMAZING, EVEN THOUGH THE SHOW NEEDS WORK Griffin is a young black New York actor in search of more than a career. When he is kicked out of his church choir because he's …
UNFORGETTABLE AND FORGETTABLE AT THE SAME TIME Well, here's a show that, while it doesn't defy description, is nonetheless perplexing. As with Matthew Borne's Cinderella, now playing across …
BOY OH BOYS With a fun and intermittently funny score by Hal Hackady (lyrics) and Larry Grossman (music), perky, adorable, enterprising direction by J. Scott Lapp, and some shining performan…
RUNNING ON FULL After producer Sophina Brown's celebrated production last year of King Headly II — one of ten dramas of the late August Wilson's 2oth-century chronicle The Pittsburgh C…
A MORE INTIMATE TITANIC MADE EPIC It’s telling that the 1997 musical Titanic won Tony Awards for each nomination — Best Musical, Peter Stone’s book, Maury Yeston’s sc…
BUCKLEY BUCKLES A BIT, BUT DOLLY DEFINITELY DELIVERS To start with, let's agree to never say "Goodbye, Dolly." Thornton Wilder's genius for the common touch isn't just a golden legacy in …
IT COULD HAVE BEEN MURDER Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a musical that never fails to impress, no matter how many times it’s been seen. It …
SAINT BERNADETTE Now that she’s hung up her late-Victorian hat after taking over for Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway last year, the inimitable Bernadette Peters has embarked …
SOMETHING SWELL FOR MUSICAL LOVERS A studio recording of Cole Porter’s 1943 boisterously farcical musical Something for the Boys has just been released, and producer and PS Class…
YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION? How remarkable to have been a fly on the wall when the creators of 1776, the 1969 musical receiving a terrific La Mirada Theatre/McCoy Rigby revival, were d…
GREAT CHORUS, GREAT BRIDGE, GREAT INTRO WONKY SUPERSTRUCTURE A middle 8 is a section in song structure — usually in the middle and consisting of eight bars — that is used to a…
SOCIETY UNDER CLOSE INSPECTION An Inspector Calls was first performed in 1945 at a time of great change — both World Wars were fresh in the minds of the people, women had become mor…
LITTLE SHOP OF HAPPINESS I'll be the first to admit that it may be impossible to create a bad production of the 1963 jewel-box musical She Loves Me. This perfect show, based on the 1937 play…
SOME ENCHANTED EVENING INDEED At about 8 am on December 7, 1941, Japanese planes filled the sky over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Bombs and bullets rained onto the vessels moored below on the Unite…
TIME TO SAY GOODBYE She stands on the cover of her latest album, Hymn, like a diva who just came down from Sinai with the word of God, but instead of 10 Commandments, the British Broadway, W…
A NEWFOUND(LAND) WAY OF LOOKING AT MUSICAL THEATER This intimate ensemble piece may only have one stand-alone song, and it may not even be the best-crafted musical or have the emotional impa…
BEAUTIFUL DESPAIR BY A MASTER THESPIAN The river of lost souls can be found in Westwood, and your magnificent tour guide is Brian Dennehy. In this coupling of one-acts by Eugene O’Neil…