8,501 stories from Backstage
Thomas "Fats" Waller's 1943 musical "Early to Bed," here presented in a concert version by Musicals Tonight!, has the feel of a dusty, charming antique. The dust, however, tends to be more n…
Textbooks call Paul Claudel's 1912 play "The Tidings Brought to Mary" -- now being sensitively revived by the Storm Theatre and Blackfriars Repertory Theatre -- a mystery. Really, though, it…
Why the adulterous Alex (Tommy Schrider) would return to his shrewish wife, Debra (Sarah Knapp), in Mayo Simon's "Greek Holiday" is the big question hanging over the evening.
"The New Hopeville Comics" is a convoluted mess of a rock opera.
As Lola Blau, a Jewish chanteuse from Vienna who rides out World War II in America, Anna Krämer is lovable in George Kreisler's touching entertainment.
William Inge's "Bus Stop" is one of the most tender plays of the 20th century, but one would hardly know it from the Gallery Players' misguided revival.
"Crazy Head Space" conjures the one performance form it ought to avoid: the circus freak show.
"Incident at Vichy" is one of Arthur Miller's least-examined works, first presented in 1964 and not seen in New York for more than 25 years. The Actors Company Theatre here presents a first-…
Though Paul Scott Goodman and Miriam Gordon's musical never fully convinces, it's an amiable and powerfully performed trip back to the late '70s.
There's almost a Shakespearean quality to Tracey Scott Wilson's riveting, emotionally devastating play, an examination of behind-the-scenes events during the civil rights movement in Alabama…
This Blithe Spirit is like spending a pleasant afternoon tea with a favorite aunt. You'll be served familiar treats and hear familiar stories, but with Angela Lansbury and friends handing out the goodies, you know you'll enjoy yourself.
Playwright-director Richard Edwin Knipe Jr. and an exemplary cast deliver a tender but well-seasoned comedy drama in "Schooling Giacomo."
Why do playwrights insist upon writing farces and subverting the genre?
Director-adapter Roger Rees' concert version revealed that Kurt Weill's marvelously diverse score and Ira Gershwin's often hilarious lyrics have been long neglected and truly are musical the…
There are any number of reliable pop singers around these days, but few if any have Wopat's ability not so much to work a room as to be totally at home in it.
"Red-Haired Thomas," with its takes on the weathered topics of foreign relations, brotherhood, and raising children, is intelligent, engaging, and absolutely fresh.
"Humor Abuse," a title with nicely multifaceted meaning, is about much more than clown routines.
Playwright Hayley Heaton's is an interesting concept and a dramatic two-person improvement over prior Ezra Pound plays, which mostly had him ranting solo in a jail cell in Italy.
This futuristic cocktail isn't ready for present consumption.
If somewhere in New York City there is a less well-structured script than Charles Case's "Shekinah" or a more irritating performance than Steven Francisco's, then I have happily missed them.
Adapter and director Jeff Cohen has repositioned Molière's comedy about a 17th-century sleazebag and his patsy into early-Depression Manhattan, 1931, and it largely works.
Musicals Tonight! is to be commended for introducing a lost Jerome Kern score to New York audiences. But presenting such arcane material requires a sharper, more confident execution than is …
This musical revue at the Triad Theatre is a highly entertaining mosaic of the era.
Moisés Kaufman's muddled play is like "Amadeus" meets Lifetime TV.
Gérald Sibleyras' 90-minute intermissioness three-hander, translated by Tom Stoppard, is meant to be a funny-sad observation of men who rage against the dying of the light. But what should …
