FAUSTIAN PHANTASMAGORIA "There is nothing new under the sun," said a Jewish writer more than two thousand years ago. While such a sentiment may not have been intended to discourage creativit…
LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO DYSFUNCTION What becomes a new artistic director? Ambition, with a two-fisted delivery. Timothy Douglas, the new chief of the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, bravely goe…
LITTLE THEATER SCORES A BIG HIT There's nothing quite like taking a child to his very first theater outing. And when that child is a baseball fan, and the play is the family-friendly Honus a…
GOIN' A'COURTIN' IN THE BACKWOODS OF GLENDALE Glendale Centre Theatre continues its 64th season with a rambunctious production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, the highly successful MGM m…
BEING A VIRGIN CAN BE ROCKY Best known for raucous audience participation at midnight screenings, Richard O'Brien's cult movie classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show began life on the London…
THIS MUSICAL IS MURDER Dear Drury Lane Theatre: Since your production of Sweeney Todd is closing this week, please allow me to write a love letter to you for giving me the privilege of witne…
A DIFFICULT FIRST TRIMESTER Primary Stages' latest offering, Motherhood Out Loud, is a compilation of material, predominantly monologues, culled from 14 different writers’ who give the…
THERE'S TALENT SOMEWHERE IN THIS FAMILY With West Side Story lighting up Broadway only blocks from their home, the Candelarias are inspired that Chita Rivera has cracked open the doors of op…
UNINTELLIGENT DESIGN When a writer writes, sometimes the heavens open up; but more frequently, nothing opens except the mouth. The difference between what we wish to say and what gets sa…
THE UNDOCUMENTED Intringulis, an autobiographical play written and performed by Carlo Alban, is now in production at Off Broadway's INTAR. Stage and Cinema caught up with him recently to…
A PALE SHADE OF RED The closing stage picture in John Logan's 2010 Tony-winning Red at the Goodman is about as thrilling and breathtaking as theatre gets: as Abstract Expressionist painter M…
IN OVERPRAISE OF YOUNGER PLAYWRIGHTS One approaches Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's Lidless with high expectations. The play has won the prestigious David C. Horn Yale Drama Prize as well as UT …
REVUE REVIEW Richard Maltby, Jr., and David Shire are not household names among the teams of composers who have contributed to the American musical stage. Although their collaboration goes b…
DOING A DIFFICULT PLAY RIGHT Tackling William Shakespeare's late play Cymbeline is no small feat, but Fiasco Theater makes the challenge deceptively simple and positively enchanting. With a …
THE UPS AND DOWNS OF SPENDING TIME WITH STRANGERS It's everyone’s social nightmare brought to life: Â being trapped next to the annoying stranger who won’t shut up. Â But whe…
WHO'S AFRAID OF ADAPTING VIRGINIA WOOLF? Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway beautifully intertwines the inner and outer worlds of her characters, seamlessly sweeping from description to dialogue…
SHINES BRIGHT BUT GOES DIM In Michael West's Dublin by Lamplight, a community theater's idealistic mission to establish an "Irish National Theatre of Ireland" crosses commedia style with the…
FORGIVE AND FORGET The Amish people of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania taught the world a sobering lesson in 2006 when they instantly forgave the man who murdered five girls in their one-room sch…
THE CLASSIC MOZART OPERA COMES ALIVE As the story goes, he was the quintessential rogue"a womanizing scoundrel with a long list of conquests. Mozart's opera has been described as a comedy, a…
ON ONE’S VERY BEST POOR BEHAVIOR Ian is a monster. Oh, not your fire-eating dragon sort of monster. Quite possibly you’ve met this kind of monster yourself. He’s British; h…
NO EXONERATION FOR AFTER For the past decade, Partial Comfort has gained a reputation as one of the leaders in NYC's downtown theater scene as a producer of new American plays. Instead o…
THE KING YOU LOVE TO HATE Critics have thrown stones at The Life and Death of King John for centuries, but New York Shakespeare Exchange delivers such a clear, astute, and enjoyable producti…
THE ETERNALLY UNMISSABLE SHOW An alluring voice reverberates across the intimate, pitch black theater. This sultry sound is the product of a mysterious Z chromosome, the audience is informed…
GREAT DAME Were the masterpiece from the golden age of Broadway Guys and Dolls an actual guy or doll, he or she could score Social Security next year; but make no mistake, this 1950 hoofer i…
NOT YOUR MOTHER'S DARCY AND ELIZABETH South Coast Repertory's Pride and Prejudice, written for the stage by Joseph Hanreddy and J.R. Sullivan from Jane Austen's masterpiece, brings out a sid…