8,501 stories from Backstage
The historical story of serial killer Dorothea Puente, who dispatched elderly and drifter residents of her Sacramento boarding house, makes terrific dramatic material.
The Pearl Theatre Company mostly succeeds in capturing the play's cheeky insouciance; the two-and-a-half hours breeze by like 90 minutes.
With such a delightfully goofy title, what's not to like? This smart and adorable show from Tada! Youth Theater has charm and Broadway pizzazz in abundance.
Triple Shadow brings Alice's colorful world -- along with the confusion it inspires -- to multidimensional, thought-provoking life.
In David Greig's captivating yet never fully satisfying "Yellow Moon," two distinct traditions are invoked as a latter-day Bonnie-and-Clyde tale unfolds.
Elevator Repair Service has taken the stream-of-consciousness opening to Faulkner's modern classic and rendered it as a viable -- if not always enjoyable -- theatrical offering.
The song list is superb, the singing's mostly okay or better, and musical director Michael Harren's grand-piano playing is eloquent. So why are the charms in "A Grand Night for Singing," The…
Lasting just about an hour, The Castle almost has the air of an extended public service announcement for the titular facility, but it's a highly effective and necessary message.
The Country Girl was also a big hit in 1950, so given the star wattage on stage at the Jacobs Theatre, it's likely to become one again.
This engaging new play with music from Metropolitan Playhouse, based on a Washington Irving story, might just initiate a first-time category: the morality musical.
Peter Mills and Cara Reichel's new musical satisfies only sporadically. It's worthy of something just above honorable mention.
Despite its flaws, "Bordertown" displays a promising writer with a feel for offbeat comedy and quirky characters.
The simplistic premise is that we are all one under God, and yet we keep fighting and never learn not to.
Ned Rorem and J.D. McClatchy's opera based on "Our Town" is a winning effort to honor Thornton Wilder's genius and to audaciously transition an American classic across genres.
The high-energy, good-looking cast may work their hearts out to entertain, and Rob Ashford's choreography may be as impressively athletic as anything Michael Kidd once did, but when the blub…
Playwright Deb Margolin tackles complex philosophical material with simplicity and quotidian aplomb in this collection of short one-acts.
At times Carroll is all in fun; at other times she's all in seriousness - but always all in the cause of high-quality performance.
The Brick Theater's new piece comes across as an elaborate history lesson sprung from the mind of someone who let his research of ancient civilizations get the best of him.
The overall purpose of this careful articulation of Einstein's life is unclear, raising few questions as to his humanity and instead reinforcing a view of him as godlike, expressing unalloye…
The inviting Santa Monica breezes waft through "Bridge Over Land," three casually related one-acts written and directed by Gilbert Girion.
What's left to be said about mother-daughter relationships or a miserable adolescence? As Catherine Trieschmann's "Crooked" proves, there are still ways to wring fresh, intense theatre from …
Christopher "Mr. Won Five 1981 Grammys Including Best New Artist" Cross does what he does, and that's all there is to it.
In "Mark Twain's Blues," a promising premise proves less compelling than it must have seemed on paper.
To have such implausible characters and plot and not exploit them for any sort of comic effect is a shame.
Anna Akhmatova's words are simple yet strong, jarring but undeniably poignant. The same can be said of playwright and actor Rebecca Schull's portrayal of the renowned Russian poet.
