8,501 stories from Backstage
Three outstanding performances - one in each of the three one-act Chekhov plays that make up this bill - almost but not quite redeem the enterprise.
To call "Cherry Hill" tasteless is to miss the point, but the dark comedy tries too hard to be all at once edgy, cute, and insightful and instead falls flat.
Six strong singers and some worthy songs by Clive Chang are the plus factors in this world premiere of an 81-minute musical (no coincidence, that).
Journalist Jeff Favre views life on the other side of the footlights.
Fresh from an ecstatically received run in Chicago, Theater Oobleck's "The Strangerer" fuses political and literary satire, mock philosophy, and a touch of metatheatricality into something t…
What's consistent in this revue offering an embarrassment of overlooked riches is composer Larry Grossman's tuneful, colorful, and often deceptively sophisticated work. The songs culled for …
"No Niggers, No Jews, No Dogs" is a play of worthy intentions that has powerful moments. Still, the late John Henry Redwood will surely be remembered for a far better piece - "The Old Settle…
Any two-hour farce had better keep the plot and characters in constant motion, and the greatest failing of Brian MacInnis Smallwood's "The Wedding Play" is that it doesn't. Almost compensati…
Are we witnessing some meta-theatrical critique of pop culture or an internal struggle that Neal Medlyn shares with the Purple One? It's a riddle as inscrutable as Prince himself.
"Kicking a Dead Horse" may start with a comic premise and tour through Sam Shepard's oeuvre, but it settles in unfamiliar territory - it's the first time I can recall Shepard sounding shrill.
Dysfunctional families have long provided fodder for American drama. But no playwright has approached the family dynamic with quite the same mixture of heartbreak and hilarity as Christopher…
Joel Gross' intriguing portrait of the French queen combines private emotions and public politics.
Whisper cleverly mines the dramatic tension between "reality" and the seductive power of technology.
If Suite Atlanta were a final performance from a high school acting workshop, it would demonstrate energy and initiative, but would but still need work. As an Equity showcase, it's embarrass…
A complex disquisition on women, politics, vanity, selfishness, sensuality, and the elusiveness of truth, the play is bolstered by Jan Maxwell's performance as fictional Renaissance artist G…
The show - which aspires to the loose, empowering spirit of Spelling Bee - creates a sweetly sincere panorama of high-school geekdom.
In his lean, thick-haired, bespectacled way, James Braly looks something like a cross between Gustav Mahler and a hip young English professor with a taste for understated gray blazers.
Don Reed, the author, director, and sole actor in this 90-minute piece subtitled with the triple pun "True Tales of a Reluctant Player," should also be claiming the role of choreographer.
This revival of the 1955 hit scores some runs but fails to knock the ball outta the park.
Playwright-director Del Shores brings his hit play to TV.
Charlayne Woodard rights her career by writing solo plays.
Neal Bell's "Somewhere in the Pacific" gets an awful lot right about the way men at war joke and the way they fall apart. But the experience of watching Sarah Kane's "Crave" is voyeurism at …
In a show constructed to seem thoroughly effortless, Kozuch acts the tunes every bit as well as she sings them.
Performing with all the confidence and humor of a young Kaye Ballard, something about Gretchen Reinhagen's modesty appealed to me, and the appeal only increased as she itemized in songs and …
A Japanese children's song with a tune that brings to mind the lilting melody of "London Bridge" is the unlikely inspiration for Ken Miyamoto's poignant one-woman drama of the same name.
