8,501 stories from Backstage
As long as Aurin Squire's play remains an epistolary one, there's interest; when the communicants come face to face, however, it becomes an improbable meandering treatise about two lost soul…
There's little new to be found in Deirdre O'Connor's coming-of-age tale, but under Suzanne Agins' sure direction, O'Connor's abundance of clichés is somehow surmounted thanks to a pit…
Whenever Encores! concert staging of "Finian's Rainbow" is singing or dancing to its stunning collection of E.Y. Harburg-Burton Lane songs, you love the show you're near. But when David Ives…
Hilary Gardner, the singer in the group known as the Kurt Weill Project, has a voice as smooth as rippling silk. However smooth-as-silk voices are not a top requirement for Kurt Weill interp…
This is a landmark production of a great play. Miss "Exit the King" at your peril.
Mark Dunn's sporadically amusing comedy has some snappy stretches of long-distance dialogue, but the multiple story lines are of mixed effectiveness and at times seem to be fighting one anot…
There's so much that's smart about Godlight Theatre Company's production of Alan Lyddiard's stage adaptation of George Orwell's classic novel.
"Love" could just as easily be called "Need." Such is the bleak viewpoint playwright Patricia Cornelius brings to her age-old topic.
Director David Levine's performance piece is information, demonstration, and discussion, over and over. But is it theatre?
Charles Fuller's 1980 work "Zooman and the Sign" is a problem play, the problem being the social deprivations and concomitant personal failures that lead to gang violence, senseless murders,…
There's a lot of talk in "Impressionism," Michael Jacobs' shallow romantic comedy-drama about the titular school of painting. Unfortunately, the result is a blobby, predictable mess.
The notes Eden Espinosa sings fall like her hair in marvelously supple curves and mesmerizing shapes and catch the light.
For any enthusiast who wants to know more about the Work Projects Administration, the Federal Theater Project, or just how little times have changed, "Power" brings history to living, breath…
Every once in a while even seasoned theatregoers have to scratch their heads over a playwright's intentions and think, What was that all about?
Witness Relocation's dynamic dance-theatre piece currently at La MaMa features a fine ensemble.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who recount the plots of movies and TV shows in excruciating detail, and those who are forced to listen to them. Count "Rambo Solo" conceiv…
The production is beautifully acted, and playwright Christina Anderson's ear for dialogue crackles through unflinchingly real characters, but the final effect is a muddle.
Yasmina Reza's latest play is a well-crafted playwriting exercise rather than a believable character study.
Obscure philosophy, virtual reality, human interaction, and all the codes that go with each get a thorough, thought-provoking exploration in Bob Jude Ferrante's new play.
Allison M Keating's "Rods and Cables" is a whimsically sardonic multimedia deconstruction of sex and sensuality.
What elevates this sordid Southern melodrama above the standard of Lifetime TV movie fare is the wealth of detail with which playwright Colin McKenna has lovingly filigreed his text. Unfortu…
At three hours, the evening is too long; each of Murray Schisgal's one-act plays needs tightening. But there are laughs and a few tears, and you could do worse.
It happened for me during "America." I forgot I was sitting in a Broadway theatre watching professional actors in a revival of "West Side Story."
This theatrical investigation of the insidious effect of the news media doesn't entirely work, but the young company Bone Orchard is one to watch.
Writer-performer Donal O'Kelly is greatly aided in his new play by his performing partner, Sorcha Fox. In a time when we are awash with solo author-actors, the dramatic possibilities and var…
