1,397 stories by "Tony Frankel"
ART OR NOT, IT'S A FUN PLAY Yasmina Reza's oft-produced Art (English translation by Christopher Hampton) may be singularly responsible for the current plethora of new plays today billed as "…
WHEN RECOMMENDATIONS DON’T TURN OUT AS HOPED FOR Aaron Feldman, the charismatic, bright, and privileged protagonist of Jonathan Caren's promising but highly unwieldy new play The Recom…
THE SHOW ABOUT THE HAND THAT GIVES YOU THE FINGER I get a thrill when I think of the tourists who are milling about Old Town in San Diego. Exhausted from tchotchke shopping and sugary treats…
THE FEATS OF THE FOOTES America is preoccupied with an unstable economy, tax increases, oil profiteering, cash deficiencies, and the plummeting worth of real estate. Yet history does indeed …
EXCELLENCE VS. HOKUM With Lonesome Traveler, a compendium of the golden years of American folk music, writer/director James O'Neil has developed a long-winded and incoherent revue that is mo…
HERE COMES MR. JORDAN Have you ever been to a sultry party that has the oppressive feel of a languid, humid day in the Deep South, only to have the energy shift dramatically when a raconteur…
THE VALUE IN SIMPLICITY The purposefully simplistic proceedings of David Cromer's production of Our Town may seem bold and innovative to some, especially to those weaned on Broadway spectacl…
OWNING HER INNER KVETCH In Michael Wex's treatise Born to Kvetch, he asserts that Kvetching (complaining) is not only a pastime for Jews " it's a way of life. Kvetching can be applied indiff…
BLACK COMEDY AND KITCHEN SINK DRAMA: AN IRISH STEW While the horror and suspense merely simmer in The Beauty Queen of Leenane " Martin McDonagh's 1996 black comedy " the dark humor, bleaknes…
GO TO THE DEVIL Within the manifesto of Kneehigh " an avant-garde, world-class theater company based in Cornwall, England " is a simple but mighty statement: Kneehigh tells stories. By r…
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A GOOD STORY After winning two Tony awards in 2007 for book and lyrics of Spring Awakening, Steven Sater teamed up with the one-and-only Burt Bacharach to write s…
SUITORS SUIT ILL-FITTING SUITS Enda Walsh, scribe of The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom, is one of the great polarizing writers in modern theater:Â his admirers love the Eng…
UNAPPRECIATED MASTERPIECE OR ABJECT FAILURE? Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein began the Golden Era of Broadway with two musicals that reimagined the previous form of musical comedies " …
AN ERROR IN COMEDY One of Shakespeare's earliest plays, The Comedy of Errors, is also his shortest and most farcical. In fact, while scholars argue over the classification of other Bard work…
QUEEN OF THE GYPSIES It's a relief that Chita Rivera, one of the last great holdovers from the Golden Age of Broadway still performing today, told the audience in Costa Mesa that she doesn't…
GET SOME FANNY There are many reasons to see the revival of Harold Rome's 1954 musical Fanny at the Alex Theatre, but you only have one shot. Musical Theatre Guild (MTG), an Equity company o…
SITTING VIGIL FOR THE CENTER THEATRE GROUP, OR LIVING ON BORROWED THEATER Vigil, which was first done in Canada in 1995, is an oft-produced play, having been translated into 19 languages. At…
YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN A trip to South Coast Rep is exactly what was needed to shake off the blues of this year's morass of over-produced and/or over-written theater. The Trip to Bountiful, H…
FALL FLAT My extreme reluctance to recommend Next Fall should not necessarily deter you from seeing it. Stay with me here. Geoffrey Nauffts' Tony-nominated play, which concerns a gay cou…
MANAGEABLE HAIR Say what you will about Musical Theatre West's fluffy season selections, including Winter Wonderettes, Forbidden Broadway and Spamalot, this company continues to collect an a…
A BIGGER NOISE NEEDS TO BE MADE WITHIN A Noise Within (ANW), one of the nation's leading classical repertory theatre companies, has done the unimaginable: after 19 seasons in a Masonic build…
A COWARD IN PEACETIME [Undelivered letter to Noël Coward discovered in North Hollywood:] My Darling Noël: Sir Anthony here, writing to you from the palm-drenched regions of Los Angeles…
THIS FAIR IS JUST THAT: FAIR Science Fairs are an opportunity for students to apply scientific methods to an experiment and present them at a competition. The best way to take first prize fr…
A BRIDEGROOM ROBBED OF ITS CHARM Anxiously anticipating The Robber Bridegroom at International City Theatre (ICT), I felt like an excited bride who had already slept with her soon-to-be husb…
'TIS FOLLY TO OVERPRAISE FOLLIES The buzz in the lobby of Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) on opening night of Stephen Sondheim's landmark 1971 musical Follies was palpable; people from aro…
