8,501 stories from Backstage
Martin McDonagh's black and bloody humor has forged some of the funniest contemporary stage work, but as made clear by this fully realized revival- presented by Galway's Druid Theatre Compan…
Simon Green's yuletide solo act manages to find the sentiment within the sophistication. This holiday confection is the perfect cabaret cookie for a troubled metropolis.
"Pal Joey" is back in a production that, although it can't quite make up its mind what it wants to be and is too remote to be engaging, still manages to find the brash undertones of a fabled…
Molly Pope has a pile-driver alto, and she's going places with it - whether you like it or not.
Tyrell's boyish gaiety -- in the old and marvelous sense -- is taking place for the fourth year on the Café Carlyle stage, where the joy he dispenses is right in line with the joy tha…
Set to a zesty compilation of appealing musical selections largely by contemporary Indian composers, Pina Bausch's "Bamboo Blues" is a pioneering brand of dance-theatre performance art.
In a tiny basement theatre, six actors using their outdoor voices will leave you with ringing ears after almost two hours. You will not, however, be left weak from laughter at this new Molie…
Thomas Middleton's 1621 drama, here given a colorful and fluid production by the Red Bull Theater in a lively adaptation by Jesse Berger, who also directed, suffers from the built-in problem…
Like the popular film that inspired it, "Shrek: The Musical" is an honest-to-god, across-the-board crowd pleaser.
Listening to Margaret Preece, I thought of what a stickler Richard Rodgers was about his tunes. He liked them sung precisely as he'd written them. Precisely as Rodgers wrote them is precisel…
The funny-tragic tale of sisters Olga, Irina, and Masha, trapped in a loveless and wearying existence with their weak brother, his shrewish wife, and a host of interlopers, is undercut by ha…
Zack Calhoon's play, a prequel to "Macbeth" that focuses on the three witches, is over almost as soon as it has begun, and most of what happens on stage lacks dramatic purpose. But viewed pu…
Frank Langella humanizes a disgraced former president
Those who go for the kind of trumped-up bickering you'd have thought the Smothers Brothers and Sonny and Cher laid to rest three or four decades back will appreciate this. Those who don't, w…
Perhaps if the first two mini-musicals in Joe Iconis' triple feature were more impressive, the staggering amount of navel-gazing in the third offering, "The Process," would be forgivable.
While the performances linger, the play evaporates in a puff. You think, "Good bit of theatre; now let's get a drink."
I'll be ready to hear Maud Hixson again when she learns that lovely voices are a dime a dozen, but singers who have something to impart beyond a by-the-numbers songwriter homage are much mor…
When it comes to whim, few are as reliably and as amusingly whimsical as Garrison Keillor is.
Imagine Emily Dickinson at an open-mike night. How would her poems come across as she read, sang, and orchestrated them?
Playwright Alan Hruska seems to be working with a different set of blueprints every 30 minutes or so in his problematic puzzle of a play.
Keith Reddin and Meg Gibson's contemporary version of "Antigone" wants to say something about politics and justice. But this retelling of the tragedy presents too many stereotypes to drive t…
With this loony bunch, Craig Lucas is too obviously creating a microcosm of America. See how screwed up this country is, he metaphorically screams at us.
None of us has been as bad off as poor Johnny Lovejoy when his long-term trick, Dave, transforms into an honest-to-goodness pig in Chris Weikel's charming queer confection.
For all its ambition and theatricality, North American Cultural Laboratory's production suggests a company under the unfortunate influence of semiotics and early Tom Stoppard.
David Greig's translation of Albert Camus' play is accessible but flat and contains far too many jarring British slang phrases. All told, this production seems much longer than its hour-and-…
