6,591 stories from Stage and Cinema
TOO MANY ACT(S) Even apocalypses, it seems, can be goofy, disruptive, and "meta" " if you go by Lookingglass Theatre Company's irritating and overlong world premiere. With two intermissions …
YOU MOSCOW, YOU MOSCOW The avant-garde seems more interested in re-invention these days than in invention, but from the point of view of someone who had thought that there was nothing new un…
BULLDOZED It breaks my heart that another poorly made production with no soul or message gets recorded as an Original Cast Recording. Those who may think that Bulldozer is a musical about…
UNFORGETTABLE AND FORGETTABLE AT THE SAME TIME Well, here's a show that, while it doesn't defy description, is nonetheless perplexing. As with Matthew Borne's Cinderella, now playing across …
JOY TO THEÂ WHEEL After 40 years of marriage, the times they are a-changin'Â for Frank and Stella Conlin, who now want very different things. On the day of Frank 's retirement party, he…
SHE STRIKES! SHE SCORES! WELL, BOWL ME OVER It's only women who perform, design, direct, write, and otherwise shape this Goodman Theatre world premiere. Rebecca Gilman's Twilight Bowl …
LETTERS FROM THE LOVELORN LEAP OFF THE PAGE Dear Sugar, I have a problem. My editor assigned me to review a play that does not follow conventional theater techniques, has only one known char…
A SMALL STORY SOARS IN THIS NEW OPERA Right now the Studebaker Theater houses a wonder. A chamber opera with a heart of gold, The Scarlet Ibis, with a supple score by Stefan Weisman and l…
A SWEET EMBRACEABLE SHOW In 1930, a musical called Girl Crazy, with a score by George and Ira Gershwin, opened on Broadway to moderate success, running 272 performances. The rarely-revived s…
YOU WILL BUY During a two hour car trip with my future husband, he — being from New York and loving Broadway musicals as much as I — decided to sing every song from Oliver!, his …
LEO TOLSTOY TURNED TO LEAPS AND TWIRLS IN THIS WORLD PREMIERE BALLET MILESTONE So many superlatives to savor. Newly created by 35-year-old wunderkind composer Ilya Demutsky, who replen…
BOY OH BOYS With a fun and intermittently funny score by Hal Hackady (lyrics) and Larry Grossman (music), perky, adorable, enterprising direction by J. Scott Lapp, and some shining performan…
A SEQUEL WITHOUT A SOUL Some nerve. It takes chutzpah on top of arrogance to dare to continue, let alone complete, another playwright's stand-alone masterpiece. Lucas Hnath has the temerity …
HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE THEATER Some plays take time to come into their own, But they're well worth a wait. Over two decades after its Off-Broadway debut, Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Dri…
DON’T MIES IT In Mies Julie, Yaël Farber's contemporary adaptation of August Strindberg's 1889 play Miss Julie, Farber swaps out Strindberg's Swedish estate for a prosperous farm in…
DONE TO DEATH "I thought we might show more decorum by keeping our long miserable mistake to ourselves," Alice tells Edgar after he expresses his intention to celebrate their silver wedding …
CALL ME UNDERWHELMED For City Center's 75th anniversary season, Encores! has revived a show from its second year, Call Me Madam — only the second show it has ever repeated. Irving B…
A PIPELINE TO GREAT THEATER The title of Pipeline refers to the much-reviled "school-to-prison" conduit that keeps minority kids from any outcome but incarceration, soft or hard. It's …
THE SOUND OF A BRAIN BREAKING Uncertainty is the default drive behind the 95 excruciating minutes of French playwright Florian Zeller's The Father. Seldom has a staged mystery shifted so …
RUNNING ON FULL After producer Sophina Brown's celebrated production last year of King Headly II — one of ten dramas of the late August Wilson's 2oth-century chronicle The Pittsburgh C…
OUR LOVELY FRIEND RETURNS AT LAST I have never seen Julia Sweeney on film or television. Okay, almost never: there’s Pulp Fiction and Stuart Little. Yet while Sweeney is notable …
A MORE INTIMATE TITANIC MADE EPIC It’s telling that the 1997 musical Titanic won Tony Awards for each nomination — Best Musical, Peter Stone’s book, Maury Yeston’s sc…
B-SIDE MYSELF Breathes there a soul who hasn’t sung along with a favorite album? And, ah, if the songs we sing were rare and challenging and related to one’s life, we might have …
BUCKLEY BUCKLES A BIT, BUT DOLLY DEFINITELY DELIVERS To start with, let's agree to never say "Goodbye, Dolly." Thornton Wilder's genius for the common touch isn't just a golden legacy in …
A DEATH OF FRESH AIR It's a tour de force times ten as Monty Navarro, distant heir to the D'Ysquith fortune, slaughters his way to an earldom and marriage, for better or worse, with a doting…
