My love of Shakespeare in the Park is sort of limitless, which is odd because my love of Shakespeare is not. Every year, even years when I don't have a fond affection for the play being perf…
Every child should have the opportunity to make a habit of arts participation. Every city and state should be able to boast about its cultural patrimony and use it to attract businesses and …
Seriously demented fun is on display at <em>The Explorers Club</em>. That is, the new play by Nell Benjamin at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage 1 at City Center.
As creator Ken Mahoney told me, his site will be somewhere where married suburban housewives with two children can go to find out what shows other married suburban housewives with two childr…
If you don't mind an Othello (Adrian Lester) and an Iago (Rory Kinnear) policing Cyprus in desert fatigues and...
Errors -- of identification, understanding and more -- abound in the Public Theater's current Shakespeare in the Park offering, <em>The Comedy of Errors</em>.
Tony night. The biggest night of the year for the theater industry (not gross-wise) and for me personally. This year it was a...
Does the Arts Council "reduce from the bottom," zeroing out grants to the smallest grantees (effectively putting them out of business), or does it make drastic cuts to the largest …
There has been talk throughout my career of allowing NYC theaters to get the Regional Theatre Tony. They've wanted it. I've always thought it was sort of a ridiculous, greedy desire.
By 1959 when Tennessee Williams got around to presenting Sweet Bird of Youth on Broadway, as directed by Elia Kazan and...
There's a cutting-edge, politically provocative, modernistic new-style musical at the Public Theater that will have you literally dancing in the aisles.
When Ben Stanton's lights flash up at the Lucille Lortel on Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Happy, ex-lovers Steph (Jenna Fischer)...
Give thanks to the gods of talent for John Guare. They've conferred on him an inquiring mind that finds inspiration...
If you don't count your relationship as really real until you got married, and I can't get married, you'll never count mine. That's why we need marriage equality.
One of my DeVos Fellows at the Kennedy Center asked an important question in class recently. She wanted to know, "What do...
Glancing at the shows nominated for Best Musical for this year's Tony Awards, it is easy to mistake the list as being a Hollywood box office report.
The answer, in a word, is: a lot. The question being, how much does Jane Lynch -- the antagonistic cheerleader coach of <em>Glee</em> -- add to the heretofore sleepy revival of &…
I feel pretty confident that my favorite play of the year, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, will win Best Play and my favorite musical, Matilda, will win Best Musical. (There is a ground…
The Emergency Mayor of Detroit is considering selling off a large portion of the collection of the Detroit Institute of Art to pay off the city's $15 billion debt. Kevyn Orr has said he is …
People giddily adapting properties into musicals used to say of the source material--plays, novels,...
New York City--The most interesting piece of anecdotal information I picked up at this year's BookExpo America was from Paul Oliver...
For some reason, directors like to take liberties with Bertolt Brecht. Perhaps because the German playwright placed...
Hey music lovers, let's consider--for want of a better term--pop crooners. At the moment, the greater listening public...
The current media agreement in force in the United States has severely limited the amount of orchestral music (and opera performances) on public television, radio and the Internet. Most orch…
Santo Loquasto's set at BAM's Harvey for Henrik Ibsen's undoubtedly most challenging, yet ultimately intriguing, play, The...