The performance of Verdi's "La Traviata" featuring Bonnie Frauenthal as Violetta and Jose Heredia as Alfredo Germont was wonderful in many ways. Frauenthal sang and acted her complex role co…
Playwright Ana Nogueira has a facility for often arch dialogue but not much else. The play's potentially promising sci-fi premise is undermined by its bizarre vagueness. Not only do the le…
While proud of how she is portrayed in the press, as a woman who couldn't be broken, McPhee delves beneath the surface to illustrate how Shanley really felt once she returned to an empty apa…
During the three and a half hours of "Phaedra(s)," Huppert masturbates, menstruates, throws up, fellates several versions of Hippolytus, flails about with masochistic glee, and screams so lo…
Unlike the original short story which was set on a rural farm in Cornwall, England, and the film which was reset in Bodega Bay, California, the play takes place entirely in the main room of …
Felder's play begins with a video of the actual Leonard Bernstein delivering a colorful, yet entertaining, illustrated lecture on music. When Felder sashays down the aisle, a cigarette in o…
Lott employs skillful puppetry, complementary video projections, innovative lighting and novel sound design to show the transitions between the present and make-believe. Five puppeteers (Rob…
This comedy revival of Leslye Headland's 2010 play, that was adapted for the 2012 film of the same name, "Bachelorette," is as caustic and outrageous as ever. While looking ahead to a weddin…
Playwright Julia Cho has crafted an engaging and universal work that unevenly blends reality with mysticism. The characters are all very well delineated and the dialogue is flavorful and re…
While the New York City Opera's staging of "Aleko" could not be called a major rediscovery, it was an admirable attempt to offer a non-standard repertory work that had probably not been seen…
The show includes pole vaulting, giant flowers that rise up out of the ground, the building of the bone structure of the totemic Thanator, the high flying of the Toruk, a flock of birds play…
Director Kira Simring's superior staging theatrically presents the play's complicated situations with clarity and surrealistic flourishes. Characters often enter and exit through unlikely p…
Following "Bachelorette" and "Assistance," Leslye Headland's latest play, The Layover, is a taut psychological thriller told in an updated film noir style. Trip Cullman, who has directed all…
Taub's eclectic score to original lyrics includes jazz, rhythm and blues, pop, Broadway and ragtime. Among Kwei-Armah's ingenious touches were his use of a series of community cameo groups p…
To call "About Clarence and Me" simply a play is misleading, as the project features an entirely original score by co-writer Scott Hiltzik. A classical musician, Hiltzik's music is technical…
Written in 415 B.C. as a criticism of the Athenian capture of Melos and the subjugation of its population earlier that year, "The Trojan Women" has remained relevant throughout the last 2,50…
Besides achieving sensitive and strong performances from the cast, director David Drake masterfully fulfills the playwright's intentions with his lively and brisk staging. The collaborative…
The beauty of Chen's technique lies in engaging the audience in a guessing game that they don't immediately know they are a part of " presenting them with certain messages that appear to be …
Now that we have been through all the angry play movements, literate writers like N.C. Hunter and Terence Rattigan are once again ripe for revival. While in his own time, Hunter was criticiz…
Gwenllian Higginson and Michael Humphrey in a scene from "The Good Earth" (Photo credit: Tom Flannery) Darryl Reilly, Critic "Then there's the queen and she lives in Buckingham Palace in Eng…
"Crashlight" is a musical that is so inept that the recurring age-old mental question while watching it is, "What were they thinking?" The "King Lear"-style eye gouging sequence in the seco…
Toni Press-Coffman's "Touch" is a rather challenging play both in that a great deal of it is narrated in recollection and also that it deals with much naked emotion. The cast led by Peter Mc…
Vegas still maintains its status as a hotspot for Broadway musicals, theatrical plays, and live entertainment. Although Performing Arts doesn't appeal as largely to today's youth in relation…
The dynamic cast is made up of Marquis Gibson, Lauren Shaye, Nicole Stacie and Christian Lee Branch. These four very talented performers all portray numerous characters during this 75-minut…
The ten solos proceeded efficiently and smoothly with certain similarities becoming apparent: black was the color of all but one of the costumes and black was the mood of most the works. Cr…