314 stories from sceneonstage.com
I have long been aware of the existence of Hudson Guild Theatre Company, but until I was encouraged to watch their virtual world-premiere production of "A Five Mile Radius," I had never seen…
Having performed years ago in theaters tucked away in tourism towns across the country, my very first sighting of Weathervane Theatre in Whitefield, New Hampshire inspired a déjà vu rush…
"Not to put any pressure on you, but the entire American theater is depending on you to be smart." Thus spoke Kate Shindle, president of Actors Equity, to the cast of "Godspell," the first l…
Ruben Santiago-Hudson's "Your Blues Ain't Sweet Like Mine" premiered at Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey in 2016. The cast (with one replacement) re-assembled last week for a remote…
How's this for minimalism: Playwright Duncan Macmillan's instructions for the staging of "Lungs" specifies a bare stage with no scenery, no furniture, no props, no mime and no costume change…
Since its premiere in 1949, when it won all six of its Tony Award nominations (and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama), Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" has had four Broadway revivals, all of…
A column by Ginia Bellafante in the Metropolitan Section of the Sunday May 31 New York Times about last week's Central Park incident between bird-watcher Christian Cooper, who is bla…
With no Theatre to cover due to this nasty fellow… …I'll share a few excerpts from "It's Better Than The Movie," my work-in-progress anecdotal memoir: July 1956: I was an apprentice (as …
All ten of August Wilson's American Century Cycle plays are not created equal, but just as the non-star players on a championship team are essential to its success, so are all the plays inte…
Composer-lyricist Meredith Willson's 1960 musical "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" was inspired by an exaggerated tale about the exploits of real-life Titanic survivor Margaret Tobin Brown. Whil…
The first quarter hour of "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" depicts Bob and Carol at The Institute at Big Sur, a 'new age-y' retreat, where the thirty-something couple is converted into …
Charles Fuller's "A Soldier's Play" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1982. Loosely based on Herman Melville's "Billy Budd," it was originally staged by the off-Broadway Negro Ense…
If, as hypothesized, there are only seven basic plots, it is a sure bet that Shakespeare used them all. (I count four in "Hamlet" alone.) It is no wonder, then, that playwrights through the …
It seems that one-actor stage presentations have increased in number over the past decade or so. And as critical attention to them has grown with that proliferation, the quality level has ri…
Many a fine play is waylaid by shoddy acting and/or directing. (Recall your last misbegotten Shakespeare.) Conversely, a lesser theater piece can be enhanced by superior efforts in those cat…
Ken Ludwig's 1980s farce "Lend Me a Tenor" revolves around two operatic tenors being mistaken for one another in costume and makeup for the same role. The play is funny…or not, depending o…
Want to be like the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players? Just pick a niche-market art form and become a world-class expert at it. Founded in 1974, NYGASP's performance-ready repertory of…
A conundrum/problem/challenge: How to describe a Broadway musical that pretty much exceeds familiar superlatives in pretty much all its facets. Well, let's try, by first thanking Alanis Morr…
If it is true, as often stated, that there are only seven basic plots from which all plays are derived, one of the seven certainly involves conflicted parent-offspring relationships. Think "…
"Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella" comes by that official title honestly. Having gone through several revisions since its debut as a TV special in 1957, the show depends for its success …
The overture to "Guys and Dolls" is unique in that it is scripted as well as orchestrated. It is a street scene collage danced " acted-out really " by the ensemble: floozies, society dames, …
Two recent adaptations of Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac," both titled simply "Cyrano," play fast and loose with the 19th-Century French playwright's masterpiece. At Two River Theater …
Two things to know about "Lily," the world-premiere play at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch. First, Christopher Daftsios's play is constructed like an orderly three-part farce, w…
 It is generally conceded that "Period of Adjustment" is Tennessee Williams's only full-out comedy, but "The Rose Tattoo" could claim a close second, especially as the second half plays o…
How long after seeing some musicals does it take to get a song out of your head? I'm stuck with "NYC" a full week after every "Annie," and "Goodbye to blueberry pie" after "Gypsy." Isolating…
