1,091 stories from Show Showdown
What does an all-female Julius Caesar teach us that we don't already know about Shakespeare's tale of betrayal, ambition, and male stupidity? Not that much, really--but it does make the thin…
Jon Robin Baitz's 1988 play The Film Society, which takes place in South Africa in the 1970s, explores racism, compromise, the closet, friendship, and many other interesting themes. Unfortun…
The glorious Tamar of the River, running through October 20 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, is a must-see for anyone interested in nontraditional, engaging, and accessible musical thea…
Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play is not warm or fuzzy or uplifting or heartbreaking. Its characters are not especially finely wrought or deeply nuanced, and do not Learn…
Kafka's The Metamorphosis is, for all its terse language, sparse emotional display, and brevity, a tale with some pretty huge themes about family dynamics, the personal and professional worl…
In her sweet mash-up Shakespeare's Sister, director/adaptor Irina Brook serves the audience Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, and actual soup.As the audience enters, five women are already o…
George Kelly's Philip Goes Forth at the Mint is an uneven production of an uneven play that nevertheless entertains and satisfies. Written in 1931, Philip Goes Forth treads familiar ground w…
I went to see Ethan Coen's Women or Nothing with some misgivings due to its tagline: "Women or Nothing is a play about two women so desperate to have a child that one of them will even sleep…
Watching the delightful production of George Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell being presented by the Pearl Theatre Company and the Gingold Theatrical Group, I had to periodically remind mys…
While watching Lee Blessing's mediocre A User's Guide to Hell Featuring Bernard Madoff, I found myself writing Caster's Rules of Satire.General Rules Rule 1: A satire should be entertaining.…
What does a playwright owe a living person on whom he or she bases a character? What does a playwright owe the audience who comes to see a play "based on actual events"? Some people argue th…
Soul Doctor is not the greatest show on the planet, for sure, but it's certainly not the worst, either--and while there are problems with the show that have been cited repeatedly by critics …
The real-life siblings Mary and Charles Lamb lived in the 1800s in London and wrote together. The fictional (but-somewhat-based-on-Vivien-Leigh-and-Laurence-Olivier) Lee and Oliver are forme…
My ten-year-old daughter, a native New Yorker, is occasionally bummed that we don't have space for a dog, that she has to share a bedroom with her little brother, and that we don't yet let h…
Love and the fools it makes of us sets the background for The Public Theater's world premiere of a new musical version of Love's Labour's Lost, the second show of The Public's 2013 free Shak…
When Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford's musical I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road opened at the Public in 1978, the theater critics who reviewed it were hostile. (The enormo…
Rory O'Malley, Bryan Fenkhart, Autumn Hurlbert, Lauren Molina, Roe Hartrampf, Heath CalvertIf you are looking for an entertaining piece of fluff, the musical Nobody Loves You at the Second S…
Last night, I visited an old friend who I hadn't seen in decades. The friend was I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road, and the reunion was lovely. Renée Elise GoldsberryI'm…
How did I respond to The Past Is Still Ahead, written and directed by Sophia Romma, at the Midtown International Theatre Festival? Let me count the ways: I thought it was brave, moving, inte…
Do you suppose the performers in the Cirque du Soleil are actually human? For much of Quidam, I was convinced that they are stunning aliens visiting us from some magical realm where gravity …
Hi:There will be more theater reviews from me in the coming weeks (whether you want them or not!). In the meantime, I wanted to share the fact that the American Music Review newsletter, whic…
The website for the movie Pina says, "Pina Bausch [was] a legendary dancer and choreographer. Her unique creations transformed the language …
Please welcome guest blogger Emma-Caster Dudzick. As an avid Harry Potter fan, Potted Potter sounded to me like an impossible feat: presenting all seven J.K. Rowling books in only 70 minutes…
I guess that Barbra Streisand is a legitimate target of satirists and imitators. It's not as though she simply does her acting and directing and retires to her quiet life. She has put hersel…
If you never had the amazing experience of seeing Colleen Dewhurst perform live, you can get a taste of how wonderful she was through the magic of technology. In 1959, John Steinbeck's Burni…
