Intentionally or not, most shows that make their way to Broadway or the major off-Broadway stages are geared for people who usually go to the theater. Which usually means you get a lot of st…
Casting, they say, is half the job of putting on a successful play. In the case of Plenty, the revival of the David Hare drama that is running at The Public Theater through Dec. 1, the misca…
One of the many things this week's election has revealed is that people in this country have very different beliefs about some very important subjects but tend to talk almost exclusively to …
The presidential campaign that will finally end on Tuesday has been particularly ugly but as the Red Bull Theater's kinetic"and often bloody"production of Coriolanus reminds us, politics is …
Are we Baby Boomers really so selfish? I ask because over the last few years, young playwrights have been hinting at the resentment and anger they feel toward those of us born in the middle …
In 1984, Stephen Sondheim had already created the game-changing shows Company and Follies but, feeling disillusioned by the failure of Merrily We Roll Along, he was thinking about leaving th…
Stuffed, the new comedy by Lisa Lampanelli, is a perfect fit for the Women's Project Theater, now known as the WP Theater. It's written by a woman and deals with a subject that just about ev…
Actors, directors, playwrights and producers are now eager for ways to make theater more inclusive (which is a good thing) but the rules for how to do that are still being worked out. Which …
The Anglo-Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith wrote She Stoops to Conquer in 1771 but The Actors Company Theatre's revival of this classic farce works hard to be contemporary. Maybe too hard. Befo…
Well, it's late in the day and I still haven't had a chance to write today's post so I'm going to drag out the old ghost light that theaters turn on when they're temporarily empty. Octo…
Neil LaBute made his name in the '90s by creating narcissistic characters who do mean and horrible things to the other characters in his films and plays. But over the years, this prolific pl…
Immersive experience is the phrase that everyone keeps using to describe The Encounter, the unusual one-man show that is playing a limited run at Broadway's Golden Theatre through Jan. 8 whe…
Marie and Rosetta, which has been extended at the Atlantic Theater's Linda Gross Theater through Oct. 16, aims to be a crowd-pleaser"and it certainly is. Just about everyone left the theater…
UThe gender-fluid performance artist Taylor Mac isn't so much doing a show as he is hosting a party with A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,which is playing at St. Ann's Warehouse only thr…
It may be hard to remember now but many people believed that Barack Obama's presidency would take the country into a post-racial era, where, as Martin Luther King Jr. once dreamed, people wo…
Aubergine is both a fancy name for eggplant and the title of Julia Cho's new play, now running at Playwrights Horizons through Oct. 2. The company has been touting it as a savory stew …
Besides Claire Boothe Luce's catty comedy The Women, Euripides' breast-clawing tragedy The Trojan Women, the feminist cri de coeurs of Caryl Churchill's Top Girls and Ntozake Shange's for co…
Maybe we're all still suffering from a Hamilton hangover but excitement about the upcoming theater season seems more muted than it has in past years. Still, the new shows are beginning to op…
In the old days, plays were expected to be well made and largely about people who well mannered and well off. But in the years after World War II the working class playwrights known as the A…
Even though the theater world slows down in summer, the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day is my favorite time of the year. And this year, I kicked back and was even lazier than usual (…
People write plays for all kinds of reasons and after we saw the new show that opened at Second Stage Theatre this week, my theatergoing buddy Bill speculated that playwright Leslye Headland…
The intense drama Quietly extended its run this week and is now scheduled to play at the Irish Repertory Theatre thru Sept. 25. I'm always glad to see a show find a larger audience"even…
"Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?" asks the final line of the musical Hamilton. It, of course, famously answers its own question by having black and brown actors play the Foun…
The hottest ticket of the summer is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened at London's Palace Theatre last weekend and is already sold out through next May. But on this side of the …