8,501 stories from Backstage
Arnold Schwarzenegger released his memoir "Total Recall: My Unbelievable True Life Story" this week, which details everything from his growing up with seven cats in Thal, Austria, to his pla…
You might expect any stage version of a Joan Crawford film to be a satire in the style of Charles Busch, with a fabulous drag performer in the Crawford role. Adaptor-director Julie Kramer, h…
“Grace” starts and ends with the same bang. The moment is the low point for the characters—no spoilers here, so infer what you will about the source of that bang—and …
New YouTube documentary series "Entrances, Exits, and Everything in Between with Patti LuPone" gives an intimate and candid look into the personal and professional life of Broadway legend Pa…
Three members of the four-person cast of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" are making their Broadway debuts.
"It’s totally surreal," says Carrie Coon, who earned rave reviews for her p…
Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the first couple of 20th-century English-speaking theater, were stage-obsessed (they turned down million-dollar movie offers), insisted on always working toget…
Charlie Chaplin is an intimidating role to take on, and Rob McClure is earning rich accolades for his starmaking performance in the title role in "Chaplin" on Broadway at the Barrymore Theat…
On a quiet stretch of Christopher Street near the Hudson River, the New Ohio Theatre not only found a new home in the historic Greenwich Village Archive Building but a partner in fostering t…
Having seen the original 1981 production of this one-act, dialogue-free musical, I have long maintained that it is the best of the Sondheim compendium shows. Unlike the others, such as &ldqu…
In "Lovers," as in life, there are winners and losers. Brian Friel’s play gives nods to both; the first part is called "Winners," and the second called "Losers." Although these two par…
If directing is 90 percent casting, as the saying goes, why is the casting process still such a mystery for so many? Actors, directors, producers, and New York theatergoers can learn more th…
The Tony Award-winning musical has turned profitable after only 21 weeks, which is faster than any new Broadway musical in more than a decade.
Primary Stages has a quiet winner in "Harrison, TX: Three Plays by Horton Foote," directed by Pam MacKinnon and featuring Jayne Houdyshell and Hallie Foote.
Smuin Ballet' s exhilarating evening of highly entertaining dances by Trey McIntyre, Michael Smuin, and Amy Seiwert, is performed with polished gusto.
"Independents," with a book by Marina Keegan, at the New York Fringe Festival, is a beautifully crafted musical about the doubts and fears of 20-somethings.
"The Great Pie Robbery," Ben Tostado's send-up of 19th-century melodrama in the Fringe, feels belligerent rather than affectionate toward the genre.
The Fringe's "Gay Camp" is an entertaining if erratic romp that's distinguished by the comic agility of its three-person cast juggling multiple roles.
Actor-adapter Lee Meriwether's "The Women of Spoon River," a Fringe entry, focuses on the distaff population of Edgar Lee Masters' epitaphs to vivid effect.
A nimbly funny Fringe mash-up from Her Majesty's Secret Players, "Pulp Shakespeare" imagines how the Bard might have written the film "Pulp Fiction."
Matthew Trumbull, who can be seen in "The Zebra Shirt of Lonely Children" at the New York International Fringe Festival, on Denis O'Hare in "Take Me Out."
Writer-actor Victor L. Cahn's "Getting the Business," at the Clurman Theatre, hasn't much to offer except for the redoubtable Susan Louise O'Connor.
Written and performed by Mark Chrisler, "The Art of Painting," a Fringe Festival show, is a masterful piece of heady writing about painter Jan Vermeer.
An experiment to see if humans and zombies can coexist is at the center of "Love Death Brains," a promising but flawed tuner in the Fringe Festival.
Based on the Oregon Trail computer game, "Quest for the West" is a Fringe musical that plays for nostalgic laughs, with promising hints of a deeper story.
"Bewitched" heads to the borscht belt in this hokey Fringe tuner from D'Jamin Bartlett and Mark Bornfield about a witch and a nebbishy songwriter.
