LORRAINE HANSBERRY'S OTHER PLAY Written five years after Raisin in the Sun and just before her early death at 34, Lorraine Hansberry's last work is a challenging"as in problematic"play. The …
LET'S NOT CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF George Gershwin died no older than the equally immortal Mozart"and, well, we can't make or get enough of a Broadway blessing's too-brief talent for tunes. …
THE GODS MUST BE ARE CRAZY! It's not often that one gets to see the same opera twice, especially when the opera in question is a delightful rarity like Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto, which …
 A HUGE HIT IN AMERICAN BLUE’S LITTLE SHOP American Blues Theatre seldom does musicals (the last was the wonderful Hank Williams: Lost Highway). Happily, their current triumphLittle…
MAKE SOMEONE SOMEWHAT HAPPY At the risk of repeating myself — oh, wait — I am repeating myself, but it bears repeating. I wrote about the great Coco Peru when she appeared in Mis…
A CRASH COUSE IN 'LA LA LAND' LUNACY Once in a Lifetime, the first triumph of George S Kaufman and Moss Hart (You Can't Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Royal Family), is a …
A ROYAL PRODUCTION The King and I is a rather curious bundle of contradictions and opposites. First, it's based on a true story, but plays out more like a fairy tale. In fact, it doesn't see…
A FRIEND OF DOROTHY’S What makes this boisterous jukebox musical about the life of late music and stage legend Peter Allen (whose songs make up the show's core) so winning, is the comb…
WILLIAMS ASCENDING Irene Glezos delivers a lovely, stirring performance as Lady in Austin Pendleton's staging of Tennessee Williams' masterpiece Orpheus Descending. A force of nature, Lady s…
SCATTERSHOT SPOOFERY THROWS A LARGE NETÂ OVER A LITTLE SATIRE Alluding to the elevated Chicago subway that courses through the North Side, A Red Line Runs Through It proves a theme as much…
COME RIDEÂ THE CAROUSEL It’s sad, really, that a town crammed with some of the best musical artists in the country has so few musicals produced. And when they are, for the most part,…
NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION For almost 40 years, The Groundlings has proved itself to be one of the premiere comedy troupes in the nation, creating more stars than the Big Bang (and creating …
FINDING THE HEARTBEAT OF FIDDLER "To Life" indeed. There's a ton of it, not to mention heartbreak and wisdom, in the 1964 Stein/Harnick/Bock musical triumph, Fiddler on the Roof, now receivi…
IN THE HEAT OF THE STORY "They call me Mister Tibbs." That's the signature catchphrase from the celebrated 1967 film starring Sidney Poitier the first African-American male Oscar winner) …
KISS OFF A backstage comedy with more personalities than Sybil, Sarah Ruhl’s preposterous — and in some ways pretentious — 2011 play was apparently given a boffo treatme…
NEVER SAY "NEVER AGAIN" Survivor guilt is supposedly small-scale suffering, compared to the agonies of those who never get the luxury of remorse. It's a tricky feat to accommodate near evil.…
A DOO-WOP DREAM He's going strong for a guy who died 400 years ago today. This, of course, is easily William Shakespeare's most popular comedy, if only because it delivers some magical goods…
PRODUCESÂ MORE LAUGHS PER MINUTE THAN ANY OTHER MUSICAL It's always springtime for Mel Brooks, who really does write musicals the way they used to. Even before Young Frankenstein, his 2001…
AND EVITA KEEPS ROLLING IN That great balcony scene is back. No, not R&J. It's the one with Eva Duarte Perón's valedictory aria "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina.” As this princes…
INDEED I DUBIN He wrote the lyrics to the songs that kept the world singing through some of the darkest times in human history: The Great Depression and WWII. But as with most songwriters wh…
AS FUNNY AS A PUNCH ON THE JAW Call it a comic "war of the worlds." It's the tabloid-trashy tale of a Broadway show that is literally "under the gun." As the title suggests, Woody Allen and …
DON’T WALK ON BY THIS SHOW "You won't get a career from singing: Singing will give you a career." That was all the encouragement that Dionne Warwick needed to make it big over 54 years…
BOOTS GOT MY KINKS OUT Another bus-and-truck tour of Harvey Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper's Tony Award-festooned musical has "sashayed and shanted" its way back into Los Angeles at the Ho…
AND I AM TELLING YOU — YOU ARE GOING I never saw the two touring revivals of the Tony-honored Dreamgirls that played Chicago's old Shubert Theatre. But, like Marriott Theatre's rivetin…
A GREEN-EYED RAP ROMPÂ ADDSÂ MOOR TO THE MIX Before Othello: The Remix it was only Shakespeare's comedies that received the Q brothers' trademark, rap-happy revision"Funk It Up About Not…