8,501 stories from Backstage
The horrors of combat and the triumph of maintaining one's individuality amid the misery and regimentation of war - even at the price of one's sanity - are themes that, unfortunately, never …
Sadly, "Castronauts" simply isn't witty enough; even composer Randy Courts' rhythmic score - which spans the Latin canon, incorporating samba, mambo, and meringue - can't save the show from …
Overall, in its shallowness and occasional thoughtlessness, "Ward 9" feels more like a student exercise - "dance these famous people" - than a cohesive work. Though it contains some stunning…
The cast mostly does a solid job, but "Sophia's Fall" has myriad problems, mostly due to the writing.
This gay musical version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is lightly amusing and heavily puerile.
"Gotta stand for something! Don't stand for nothing!" sings the cast of The Bubble. Yet, as the vapid lyric suggests, when it comes to nothing, this musical has more than plenty.
Though promising, this pleasantly enjoyable retread of "Much Ado About Nothing," set on a college campus in the mid-1950s, needs pruning and a sharpening of the central plotline.
This light but buoyant paean to contemporary college life is short on plot but has just enough of a dramatic arc to sustain interest. Some of the dialogue is, well, sophomoric, but the songs…
While it may sound philistine to say so, there may be some subjects too dark and disturbing for musical theatre. And pedophilia may be one of them.
Anybody who saw "Coram Boy" on Broadway will have an inkling of the fate in store for a homeless woman's baby when she places an ad looking to board him while she seeks work. Evil minds thin…
With a bit too much ambition as its only real fault, Rebecca Tourino's new play, set in an abortion clinic, stands up as moving, important theatre.
If there is a problem with the marvelously frivolous and hysterically funny "Celebrity Autobiography: In Their Own Words," it's the almost pathological obsession creator Eugene Pack has with…
The cast's charm and verve just aren't strong enough to overcome the weak writing of this new musical.
Although the show, with its impressive pulsating rock score from Paul Leschen, aims for laughs, it more often succeeds in eliciting chills as the tonal problems of Fred Sauter's book and lyr…
When Shakespeare's clowns almost steal the show, you know you're in trouble. So it is with Classic Stage Company's production of The Tempest, an insecure and inconsistent rendering of the Bard's last complete work.
If you somehow missed Les Misérables during either its original 16-year Broadway run or recent revival engagement, you need look no further than Jill Santoriello's syrupy musical version of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.
Muddled storytelling hinders tackling some ambitious themes in Ron Reed's play.
A dozen or so trunk songs do not a musical make, not even a backstage musical about putting on a musical.
The long-running satirical revue will take a break after this edition, skewering many favorites as a last hurrah.
Transporting Labiche's frenetic frolic to 1906 New York, the adapters bring us a lightning-paced entertainment that looks and sounds sensational and keeps us rolling with laughter in the ais…
Though the play's tricky amalgam of absurdist humor and social satire recalls stylistic conceits pioneered by Edward Albee during the 1960s, director Nicholas Martin's invigoratingly fresh l…
The Troubles of 1970 Belfast permeate the lives of Mojo and Mickybo. Yet these concerns are ancillary to most of the action of Owen McCafferty's play.
With some judicious cutting and rewriting, "Bonnie & Clyde" could be the next quirky, off-kilter musical hit.
All the words that best describe "The Bully" would damn with faint praise any other show. But in the case of this new children's musical, phrases like "utterly charming" and "totally adorabl…
