314 stories from sceneonstage.com
For starters, the F in "F Theory," world-premiering at New Jersey Repertory Company, does not stand for what you are thinking. No; it represents friendship, in this case not even with benefi…
Pinpointing a target audience for some shows is easy. Ten-to-twelve-year-old girls whose parents took them to "Annie" were seen a decade or so later with one another at "Rent," while their c…
Settings and casting variations on Shakespeare are virtually infinite. "Othello" in an Army barracks? "Shrew" on a Dude Ranch? A female Prospero or even Richard III? A campy "Pericles" set i…
In life there are the care-givers, the care-receivers, and those who simply don't care. All three are represented in Scott McPherson's "Marvin's Room," finally debuting on Broadway, thanks t…
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is a degenerative disease found in people who have suffered repeated blows to the head. Symptoms, which manifest themselves eight-to-ten years later…
William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw are the raisons d'être for the Stratford and Shaw Festivals in Ontario, where those venerated playwrights (and others) are staged by world-clas…
With the year nearly half spent, some random observations before leaving for Ontario to cover the Stratford and Shaw Festivals for Digital First Media newspapers in Michigan (and online) and…
Anyone who does not believe truth is stranger than fiction hasn't been following the news lately…or has never heard about Joe Monaghan, whose story is encapsulated in the playbill of Two R…
Some Broadway plays and musicals succeed or fail regardless of Tony Award consideration, but the fate of many more depends heavily on nominations, not even considering wins. Ticket sales for…
Part of my enjoyment of Red Bull Theater's "The Government Inspector" derived from not knowing how accurately Jeffrey Hatcher's adaptation translates Russian author Nikolai Gogol's 1836 sour…
The set for "Ernest Shackleton Loves Me" features a metal-frame stand-up desk upon which set microphones, a tape deck, amps and speakers, various other electronic devices and, oh yes, a set …
There is an intriguing one-act, 80-minute play on the New Jersey Repertory stage. Unfolding in the fertile theatrical setting of higher-education academia, it deals with faculty jealousy, co…
"The Women of Padilla" is a very well-written play, a realization I came to while reading it a couple days after seeing it at Two River Theater. If ever a play was suited for Two River's int…
Two-thirds of "The Play That Goes Wrong" is hilarious. The other half (apologies to Yogi Berra) is just funny. If you've ever appeared in a play, or produced, directed or stage-managed one, …
Two-thirds of "The Play That Goes Wrong" is hilarious. The other half (apologies to Yogi Berra) is just funny. If you've ever appeared in a play, or produced, directed or stage-managed one, …
Some years ago I picked up a 1939 edition of John Gassner's "20 Best Plays of the American Theatre" at the Cincinnati Public Library's Buck-a-Book sale. Among the titles are some that haven'…
"Miss Saigon" was the first play I reviewed for the Two River Times in Red Bank, NJ " or for anywhere, actually, since a stint on a Rhode Island weekly during a long-ago college summer reces…
"The Price" is not a comedy " far from it. But Arthur Miller's seldom-staged play demonstrates something his other plays do not " that Miller could indeed write funny. Not just the absurdist…
It's said that there are only seven plots. If so, who's sleeping with whose husband/wife/SO must be at least two of them. The details of such assignations are revealed late in "Multiple Fami…
Any people who don't believe in the Magic of Theatre would be well advised to get themselves to "Come From Away," where a dozen diverse performers, aided by some chairs, a few coats and hats…
Before Lin-Manuel Miranda chose Ron Chernow's 827-page biography of Alexander Hamilton to read on vacation, "In the Heights" had established him as a composer-lyricist to reckon with. Openin…
Tradition has it that Queen Elizabeth, enamored of Falstaff from Shakespeare's Henry IV plays, asked the playwright for a play depicting the character in love (a likely apocryphal 'alter…
One of the two male characters in "All the Fine Boys" is well past boyhood and neither fits the definition of fine. Joseph (Joe Tippett), at 28, is, in fact, very un-fine; the other, Adam (A…
If good intentions were reason enough to skew a review to the positive, "Ring Twice for Miranda" would merit a rave. With one line toward the end, playwright Alan Hruska makes his intention …
"American Son" is an intense, racially-charged, cautionary tale in which the title character hovers over every minute but does not appear in person. The play is set at 4AM in the waiting roo…
