8,501 stories from Backstage
A welcome import from Romania, "The Sunshine Play" takes place on a Bucharest rooftop as three people almost get involved in a love triangle. It's a slight but smart piece, sparked by an app…
The central problem with Brenda McFarlanes' tedious one-woman play is that the weak script creates little empathy for the title character, Matilda, who continually rationalizes her actions w…
Although they apparently recognize the superficiality of their subject, the show's creators try and fail to eke out a meaning from their paean to hipster culture.
Paul Rajeckas' one-man show (written with director George L. Chieffet) is a deft piece of drama and physical performance.
Rip-offs can be entertaining, and this appropriation of Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" is, as Dan Fogler puts a likable cast through its paces nicely.
"Anna and the Annadroids: Clone Zone" could devolve into a contrived, pseudo-intellectual mess but for the incredible dexterity of the dancers and their skill in maintaining their characters…
The creators of "Angst: The New Teen Musical," nearly all teenagers themselves, are extremely close to their subject matter. But although this immediacy has the potential to create exception…
In playwright and actor Ken Ferrigni's reality, when 30-something men need to bond and get over traumatic life events, they do a whole lot of blow. At least that's what Angel decides when Bu…
You can count on one hand the number of interesting plays about theology, but Matthew Francis increases the number by one with The Gospel According to Matthew.
Dirt details in searing fashion the battered psyche of an illegal immigrant. It is painful but powerful theatre and all too pertinent.
Author Jay Bernzweig exercises assiduous bravery in not sparing his audience from all the painful details of the path of a drug addict to redemption, healing, and self-acceptance.
Naomi Emmerson bears enough physical resemblance to Piaf, sings enough like her, and infuses the production with an imposed earnestness. But where do you go for Piaf's soul?
Robert Dominguez has the makings of a taut, nifty little melodrama, but the excessive dialogue tends to slacken the tension and dissipate the aura of mystery and menace.
On the page, poetic devices can evoke sensory reactions. On the stage, however, they often interfere with emotional responses. So it is with Jeremy Bloom's play "A Mikvah."
In Orange Bus Productions' musical version of Shakespeare's play, the music does not bring extra power to its Elizabethan source. Instead, it dumbs it down.
Writer and director Karlton Parris crafted this unusual Victorian penny dreadful, a supernatural musical that poignantly humanizes the victims of Jack the Ripper's gory deeds.
In New York Theatre Experiment's "Burn," playwright Creighton James explores what happens when our ghost stories eschew the fantastic and enter a more chilling reality.
This is a promising and often intelligent solo show, but some of actor-writer Melle Powers' characters are more convincing than others.
Isabelle Assante, rearranging and deconstructing Shakespeare's text, aims to throw new light on the "underwritten" Horatio. What she comes up with is an erotic love-hate relationship with Ha…
"Show Choir!" never develops any true satiric bite, settling instead for a bland, overly familiar depiction of celebrity brought down by the trappings of fame (booze, sex, and ego).
Playwright-director Kevin Michael West's light, kinky comedy, a gentle satire of masculinity and macho role-playing, is often delightful but veers into sentiment toward the end.
Jeff Mandels' sentimental, stereotypical play lacks Clifford Odets' linguistic gifts and Neil Simon's gags, but the predictable evening has one major asset: Paul Iacono as the 17-year-old, c…
