400 stories from Theatre Criticsm
By AARON KRAUSE When it comes to musicals, A Bronx Tale is not one of the great ones. Still, it's a crowd-pleasing, familiar tale populated by characters we care about. Surely, you don…
By ALAN SMASON Look out! The Little Sisters of Hoboken are back, but you need not reach for your rosary beads or prepare to make an act of contrition. All you need do is head over to Riverto…
By JACK LYONS Ernest Hemingway, the American novelist and author, became a giant of American 20th century literature.  His style was new in the early 1920s.  It was fresh and it …
By AARON KRAUSE "What are you doing to promote equality?" a black college student demands of her white professor in Eleanor Burgess's taut, intense, timely drama The Niceties. The profess…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") John Cullum, the two-time Tony Award winning leading Broadway actor, might have been content to rest on his well-deserved laurels. But…
By AARON KRAUSE If you search Emily Dickinson on Google, one of the photos you'll find is that of an austere-looking woman dressed in black. The famous poet from Amherst, Massachusetts (1830…
By ALAN SMASON No. It's not a latter-day Our Town. Nor is it Love Letters for couples. It is, however, somewhere in between. Streaming sales for a filmed stage reading of Dan Clancy's Middle…
By ALAN SMASON When playwright Becky Mode wrote her first piece Fully Committed, she wrote well of what she knew. She had worked for many years as a worker in fine New York eateries taking r…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") The story of God of Vengeance (Got fun Nekome), the three-act drama in Yiddish by Sholem Asch, was famously recounted in 2017 with …
By AARON KRAUSE A problem with online theater, especially a taped production, is that performers cannot take bows. In addition, the actors cannot bask in bravos, cheers, and sustained applau…
By EDWARD RUBIN For great fun, and a breathless romp through one woman's topsy-turvy life, Bad Dates, George Street Playhouses' filmed version of Theresa Rebeck's 2003 zany one-woman play st…
By ROY BERKO Beck Center often coordinates with Baldwin Wallace Music Theatre program to produce some of the Cleveland area's best musical theatre.  Not only does the stage often spark…
Andréa Burns sizzles and sparkles as Haley, a single parent trying to raise a teenage daughter, run a barely legitimate restaurant that only takes cash and still find time to search for lov…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") For three and a half years, Joseph Kesselring was the toast of Broadway with his dark comedy Arsenic & Old Lace. The play, which o…
By JACK LYONS How does one cover 2000 years of religious history of the Jewish people and Gentiles in the Common Era (C.E.)?  Perhaps, a good start would be seeing life through the le…
By EDWARD RUBIN The first name that comes to mind whenever the name Hershey Felder comes into play is that of actor Sacha Baron Cohen. Not only do both men physically resemble each other, ar…
By ALAN SMASON, Special to Theatrecriticism.com For the past two decades, Stogie Kenyatta has researched, performed and perfected his one-man show The World Is My Home " The Life of Paul Rob…
By JACK LYONS, Special to Theatrecriticism.com (Desert Local News) " When the movie "Casablanca" merged the powerful elements of love, war, and destiny in 1942, the film and its producers ne…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") It might be easy to dismiss Estella Scrooge: A Christmas Carol with a Twist as another in a continuing procession of holiday fare we'v…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") The third entry in the Williamstown Theatre Festival's season using the Aubible platform was released in late December. This world pre…
Rebecca Luker, a much-praised Broadway actress and singer who earned three Tony Award nominations during her 30-year career, died on Wednesday, Dec. 23 in a Manhattan hospital. She was 59. L…
Rebecca Luker, a three-time Tony Award nominated actress, whose crystal-clear soprano voice and stunning presence established her as a star in some of Broadway's more noted musicals of the p…
By ALAN SMASON Ever since the words "novel coronavirus" began to make the news circuits and theaters began what was hoped to be a relatively short downtime, the ingenuity of resourceful and …
By EDWARD RUBIN Of all the celebs channeled by drag queens and female impersonators, Bette Davis, like flies to honey, has always been at the top of every performers list. Her mannerisms, he…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Due to the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions limiting crowd sizes at public gatherings, local theatre companies have found themselves in a…
