1,091 stories from Show Showdown
It comes as no surprise that Bertolt Brecht's most incisive and cynical writings are painfully timely, right here, right now. The PTP/NYC production of Brecht on Brecht knows this fact …
Head Over Heels is fun, charming, and a lot more complex than it initially appears. It is, after all, no garden-variety jukebox musical, but one based on Sir Philip Sidney's late-16th-centur…
Brecht on Brecht takes the work of dramatist Bertolt Brecht, a polarizing post-war Germany writer whose work criticized anti-Semitism and fascism, and compiles a provocative grouping of his …
The 2018 Innovative Theatre Awards Ceremony is September 24, 2018. The nominees are as follows:OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLEDanielle Amendola, Jessica Banegas, Ryan Hunt, Kelsey Martin, Joe…
It's weird to say this about a play that premiered only four years ago (at the Public), but the revival (and first Broadway production) of Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men feels outd…
My latest essay is up at Art Times:When I was in college, one of my fellow students was Broadway producer David Merrick's assistant/gofer, which made him a big deal in the Queens C…
When David Hare's The Blue Room with Nicole Kidman was on Broadway in 1998, it seemed a thin and cliched story about sexual encounters. The Bridge Production Group at The WhiteBox Art Galler…
Six women play Mary Page Marlowe, the titular protagonist of Tracy Letts's 90-minute one act at Second Stage Theater. I imagine that developing the show was a fascinating experience for the …
The revival of My Fair Lady at Lincoln Center is much like other Bartlett Sher revivals of musical theater chestnuts at Lincoln Center: it is colorful (if, this time around, more dimly lit);…
Jordan Harrison's annoyingly didactic Log Cabin presents characters who come across as op-ed essays rather than humans. There's a gay couple and a lesbian couple who have done well in t…
The Elevator Repair Service's production of Everyone's Fine With Virginia Woolf, written by Kate Scelsa and directed by John Collins, is a rollicking feminist take down of/tribute to Ed…
The wonderful people at The Mint have done it yet again. They have gifted us with a beautiful production of a lost gem of a play, complete with smart and clear direction, wonderful performan…
Akin Babatundé, with the outstanding support of guitarist David Weiss, is giving a heck of a concert in Lonesome Blues at the York Theatre Company. Babatundé's voice travels from…
Presented as either a lecture nestled in a drama or a drama nestled in a lecture, Secret Life of Humans focuses on whether evolution is an unbroken line of progress, with each living it…
Well, we didn't do too badly this year, although we're not going to win any prizes for theatrical prescience. It was very nice to be wrong about Ari'el Stachel and Lindsay Mendez! They …
Mean GirlsMean Girls is cute and funny, well-staged, a little too long for what it is, occasionally miked too loud, and ultimately better than getting a cavity filled. I wish I'd been thrill…
I love meaningful musical theatre. I adore Sondheim. Caroline, Or Change is one of my favorite shows. But sometimes an old-fashioned, well-done, energetic, deeply silly musical is the perfec…
As a reviewer, I get invited to dozens of shows each month, and it can be difficult to decide which to see. Sometimes the choice is almost random. I picked This Is Modern Art becau…
I saw Liza Birkenmeier's the hollower three days ago and I have been avoiding writing a review because I don't know what to say. Well, yes, I know that the cast is excellent. And, yes, …
About 15 minutes into Hello Dolly, I thought, "I love this stupid show." By the end of the first act, I had eliminated "stupid." Hello Dolly has a silly plot, yes, and so…
Lily Thorne treads familiar ground in her new play, Peace for Mary Frances. Estranged members of a family gather due to the death of a parent. Old grudges are revisited, old wounds are reope…
LIZ: Were I to take awards seasons seriously, I'd join with the city's professional theater critics in wringing my hands over the purported death of Broadway at the end of this weirdly incon…
Richard Ridge and Chita RiveraChita Rivera may be known primarily as an actress and a dancer, but she knows how to choreograph a punchline. She provided plenty of laughs as she spoke about h…
When I wrote my first review of the fabulous APAC production of Follies, I was short on details. Then someone on the often-infuriating but also often-invaluable All That Chat…
Before the Internet, daily-newspaper theater critics would see shows on opening night and write their reviews immediately after. Although these reviews often determined the fate of the show,…
