By Aaron Hunt "I'd really fallen in love with Cole Porter, and his music, and just became obsessed with hearing all these obscure recordings. I saw a musical revue which was called 'The D…
RECOMMENDED Children of all ages braved a rainstorm Monday night to hear songs about jelly, see a video game where a taco takes on a squash and visit a world where a person lives in a sewer …
RECOMMENDED There's a certain magic to academic competitions. Debate teams and Academic Decathlon members understand the focus and determination it takes to stand in front of judges and face…
RECOMMENDED In the heart of Times Square there is a building called the TKTS Discount Booth; same-day tickets to Broadway shows can be purchased there at discounted prices. The queue of audi…
RECOMMENDED "That's cool as hell!" declares an enthralled pre-recorded voice, breaking away from his own faux deep thoughts about the universe, as the six-person cast of "Apes of Wrath""the …
Co-artistic director of The New Colony Andrew Hobgood, who directed "Orville and Wilbur Did It!" comments on the type of creative progression that affords this work its charm at the same tim…
RECOMMENDED In a recent commencement speech given to Dartmouth College's graduating class, award-winning writer, director and producer Shonda Rhimes addressed the question she is most often …
RECOMMENDED Few things incite feelings of patriotism in the average American like USO shows and the performing of staple military ballads like "Anchors Aweigh" and "Marines' Hymn." Arguably,…
Just entering the tiny side project theater feels like an intrusion on somebody's private space. The lack of separation between the single row of seats and the bedroom stage creates a sense …
By Dennis Polkow "As a songwriter," Sting admits, "I had experienced a long drought." Rarely inactive, Sting, now sixty-two, had been involved with a number of projects since his last solo a…
Comedy has come a long way. In the old days, many male comedians believed with all of their hearts that women just weren't funny. The comedy world was once filled with barriers for female co…
Mention to any fan of the American musical theater the musicalization of Stephen King's novel "Carrie" and I guarantee you will enjoy a visceral response; anything from the lift of an eyebro…
Working in a city like Chicago, especially downtown, the travel to work is filled with the homeless. The man shaking his paper cup, greeting those who get off the train. The woman with the d…
RECOMMENDED With a double bill of Viktor Ullmann's "The Emperor of Atlantis" and Carl Orff's "The Clever One""two one-act pieces beautifully matched, with stories revolving around misguided …
Looking for love can be a daunting task. With scores of social media and internet dating sites to choose from, most people find it easy to create a profile and start a conversation with some…
By Aaron Hunt "Many mumbling mice, Are making merry music in the moonlight, Mighty nice," sing six fresh-faced, eager-eyed young performers in unison, up the scale and then back down. David …
RECOMMENDED Book writer of Writers Theatre's new world premiere musical "Days Like Today" Laura Eason says of playwright Charles L. Mee's work, from which "Days" borrows and burnishes, "It i…
The essence of pop music is that it demands nothing of us at all. It just reminds us of what every other pop song has already told us, permeating the airwaves and synapses with the honeyed p…
RECOMMENDED Artistic Director Charles Newell's fine production affords us the opportunity to reexamine a twenty-six-year-old play that shocked and riveted audiences and critics alike with a …
RECOMMENDED There is a poignant moment in Shattered Globe Theatre's production of Sally Nemeth's "Mill Fire." Three widows pour the ashes of their dead husbands onto a bed, while recounting …
Mixed marriages are never easy … especially between nerdy young shop clerks and millennia-old, mystical serpent spirits in human guise. That's one of the major takeaways of writer/director…
RECOMMENDED In Margaret Edson's "Wit," Dr. Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., an English professor whose work focuses on the Holy Sonnets of poet, satirist, lawyer and cleric John Donne, falls prey to s…
RECOMMENDED "You can't keep cancer a secret forever, can you?" In the emotionally and factually fat exposition scene that begins Neil Simon's autobiographical play "Lost in Yonkers," a fathe…
Everyone’s got to eat, right? But not everyone has a healthy relationship with food. In fact, it’s estimated that over twenty million Americans are affected by an eating disorder…
"A song is something with a beginning, middle and an end," Berry Gordy (Clifton Oliver) advises Smokey Robinson (Nicholas Christopher) early on in "Motown the Musical." It is not only the de…