8,501 stories from Backstage
With more schlock than shock, Heterosexuals simply comes off as soft-"bore" porn.
It's a rare privilege to be invited into unfamiliar territory and yet to feel instantly at home. Something like that happens on seeing Owen Panettieri's play about three New York roommates o…
Paul Schultz has written the book, music, and lyrics for what is essentially a two-character musical. So who are all those other people on stage?
As performers rather than actors, in an extended sketch rather than a play, Megan McClellan and Brian Sostek are showing off a variety of talents, which seems to be the point of their self-w…
For anyone who wants to relive a time when music was loud and the hair was big, Power Balladz (which also features a post-show karaoke fest with the band) is the champion.
Kevin R. Free's post-racial comedy features some fine performances, but uneven writing and glacial pacing make it a wearisome endeavor.
Jim David's one-man show is a whirlwind jab at the desecration of a classic of the American stage, Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," by the artistically unwashed masses.
Alaina Kunin and Bradford Proctor have written a funny, hip musical about hormone-addled counselors at Camp Timberlake that has attracted an abnormally talented cast, here displayed to perfe…
Why is it so difficult for Mom to get the sex she wants on her birthday? That's the central question of "Happy Birthday, Mom," a tepid new play written and directed by Meghan Gambling.
Jeffrey Pfeiffer's whimsical comedy mines a vein of smart-but-silly historical pageantry that suggests an American "Blackadder," but with fairies, talking animals, and other magical folderol…
Trying to refashion a flop musical into something that works is a dicey business at best. One thing is essential: The material, however flawed, must have intrinsic quality. "Platinum," at it…
Have we forgotten what the "Fringe" in Fringe Festival means? Apparently playwright-director Timothy Scott Harris has, because there's nothing fresh, original, or offbeat in his sagging new …
The recession has taken a toll on nearly every trade, and New York's film and TV industry hasn't been spared any fiscal grief. But the Empire State's actors have reason to breathe easier th…
Yes, I received an audition simply because of Twitter. So, as an actor, if you're not on there, what are you waiting for?
By the time Trent Armand Kendall's one-man musical ends, he is wrung out and we are infused with the kind of glow that only a superlative performance can kindle.
Before you can play with reality, you have to establish one, something Tom Jacobson's "The Twentieth-Century Way" never does.
"The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Festival" is a moving and captivating storytelling session that chronicles five journeys through Katrina and the weeks that followed.
The practice of lynching remains one of the ugliest parts of American history. Unearthing the past, "By Hands Unknown" offers its audience a look inside the lives of those it affected most.
Writer-director Bob Sloan's biographical play about Judy Holliday is hagiographic entertainment that skates lightly across the surface of its subject's life.
Melanie Cortier's bland balletic choreography of "The Beatitudes," a 35-minute dance play about the Beat movement, bears no resemblance whatsoever to Beat sensibilities.
Torture: It's not a pretty topic, and author Patricia Davis doesn't promise it to be. But she does package it into a solid play. Thought-provoking and fast-paced, "Alternative Methods" is a …
Rafael Goldwaser, founder of Strasbourg's Le Theatre en l'Air/DerLufTeater, stars in this solo multimedia adaptation of I.L. Peretz's story about a melody's evolution.
It's pretty implausible that in 2010 a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew, with an atheist thrown in for good measure, would walk into a dorm room so completely ignorant of each other's religion…
In Samara Weiss' harrowing "AK-47 Sing-Along," Palestine has two arms-promoting revolutionaries to teach children about martyrdom in their own grisly version of "Sesame Street."
By the time Trent Armand Kendall's one-man musical ends, he is wrung out and we are infused with the kind of glow that only a superlative performance can kindle.
