1,091 stories from Show Showdown
NancyWhen it comes to Scott Siegel's Broadway Ballyhoo: A Show Tune Hootenanny, currently playing late Thursday nights at Feinstein's, there's good news and there's bad news. The good n…
My New Year's resolution is to see more theater. I just joined Show Showdown last spring, and, as a result, only saw about 16 shows last year. That does not qualify me to do a "Best of" list…
If you have never seen Marilyn Maye, really, what are you waiting for? She's an amazing jazz singer, a brilliant interpreter, and funny to boot. She's a delight to spend an evening with. She…
Heidi Schreck and Adam LeFevrePhoto: Carol Rosegg After her life in New York falls apart, Susan Pierce (Heidi Schreck) ends up in Plainview, KS, teaching science to high schoolers whose town…
2011 continued my personal trend of seeing many more Off-Off-Broadway shows and considerably fewer Broadway Shows, with Off-Broadway holding steady. In fact, of over 70 shows, only eight wer…
Photo: Richard TermineStick Fly, which is currently running at the Cort Theater on Broadway after bouncing around the country, has been described as an old-fashioned, domestic melodrama, and…
Is it too much to say that Stephen Sondheim is our Shakespeare? I don't think so. His range of topics is epic; he's endlessly surprising; his work is deep and textured enough for dozens of i…
Reviewing Barbara Cook is as easy as one, two, three.1. Barbara Cook is an incomparable interpreter of theAmerican Songbook.2. Barbara Cook lives her songs as freshly and honestly thehundret…
Caption: Gracie White as Snow White, Ashley Handel & Laura Careless as the Evil QueenPhoto credit: Steven SchreiberWith two big-budget Snow White films coming out in 2012, the porcelain-face…
What happens when jazz and musical theatre singers and siblings Ann Hampton Callaway (Swing) and Liz Callaway (Baby) decide to explore the music of the sixties and early seventies? You get t…
Once in a while, you get to have an experience in the theatre that is thoroughly satisfying. Every now and then, the experience is completely original. Occasionally, a movie is transplanted …
The first word that came to my mind after seeing David Henry Hwang's Ch'inglish, currently running at the Longacre, was "solid." I meant it, I thought to myself, in only the most satisfying,…
Anton Chekhov considered The Cherry Orchard to be a comedy. Its first director, Stanislavski, believed it was a tragedy. Since its first production over a hundred years ago, directors have b…
Godspell contains one of my favorite scores. Growing up enamored as much by Amy Grant and Sandi Patty as Betty Buckley and Jennifer Holliday, Godspell was one of those college discoveries th…
No surprise to find a show in its third full production in fine form during a preview. Three out of four of the lead performances are spectacular. The featured actors, young and old, are str…
The great thing about site-specific theater is that even when the play's awful, you're at least somewhere new. Thankfully, Alex Goldberg's It Is Done isn't awful -- just mediocre -…
Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin are deserved legends. Spending an evening with them singing two dozen or so songs, you know, during some incredibly magical moments, exactly why. When Ms. LuP…
[spoilers below]I'm not exactly sure what Thomas Higgins is trying to say in his intriguing play Wild Animals You Should Know (currently at the Lucille Lortel Theatre). He's clearly interest…
Once upon a time, it was considered risky for performers to play homosexual characters because people might think that they were homosexual. Once upon a time, homosexual characters were path…
The power of this collection of same-sex marriage shorts isn't the words. You won't hear anything you haven't heard before if you've been listening to anyone with anything to say on the subj…
Why would King Lear do something as foolish as give up his kingdom? What if he were secretly aware that he has early signs of dementia? Sam Waterston seems at first to take this approa…
There are few things as purely joyful as watching an excellent version of a superb show. The New York University Tisch Drama Stageworks production of Violet fits that description perfectly, …
The CD of the Sweet Bye and Bye is a complete and total treat. The people at the invaluable PS Classics have not only presented us with the world premiere recording of a musical by Vernon Du…
I am not sure there is anything left to be said about Follies. I saw it early at the Kennedy Center and was more grateful for its existence than evincing its greatness. I was surprised it tr…
Michael John LaChiusa is unique among musical writers. He often writes the book and the lyrics and the music for his shows, and his interests are wide and varied: perception, fame, sex, lack…
