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Review - Things To Ruin: It's Only Musical Theatre But I Like It

March 18, 2011

Stephen Sondheim famously commented that his Sweeney Todd is an opera when performed in an opera house and a musical when performed in a theatre.

Review - The Spidey Project: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

March 15, 2011

In the roughly five years between November of 1935 and December of 1940, the team of Rodgers and Hart opened nine new musicals on Broadway.

Review - Cactus Flower: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

March 12, 2011

Though the sexual revolution was revving into full force in 1965, you'd never know it by America's popular entertainment.

Review - Peter and the Starcatcher: Never Again

March 10, 2011

The thought crossed my mind more than once during the intermission of Rick Elice's delightfully funny romp, Peter and the Starcatcher, now playing at the New York Theatre Workshop.

Review - The Merchant of Venice: Regretfully Timely

March 8, 2011

With celebrity anti-Semitism once again making headlines very shortly after The Public Theater's production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice ended its Broadway run, it almost seems a well-timed retaliation that Theatre for a New Audience's excellent mounting make a return visit to Gotham.

Review - Timon of Athens: I Just Want Someone to Love Me... For My Money!

March 2, 2011

It isn't just Curtis Moore's action-accenting electric guitar licks that give Richard Thomas a rock star presence in director Barry Edelstein's swift and rowdy production of Timon of Athens, a stinging morality tale attributed as a collaboration of sorts between William Shakespeare and the younger s

Review - Compulsion

February 19, 2011

The most touching, delicately nuanced and beautifully realized work in The Public Theater's premiere production of Compulsion is, quite honestly, a wooden performance.

Review - Black Tie: Culture Club

February 17, 2011

The always pleasing Gregg Edelman is an actor with a special knack for revealing the educated, articulate side of America's Average Joe and in Black Tie, A.

Review - The Witch of Edmonton

February 13, 2011

The Red Bull Theater, those specialists in making Jacobean drama hip without going hipster, have assembled an excellent company for Jesse Berger's vividly realized mounting of the 1621 rarity, The Witch of Edmonton.

Review - I'd Rather Be Obama?

February 10, 2011

The biggest Broadway event of 1937 was undoubtedly the gala opening night of I'd Rather Be Right.

Review - The Road To Qatar!: Songs On The Sand

February 6, 2011

Name your musical The Road To Qatar! and in less than five words and an exclamation point you've communicated to your audience what to expect; a zany, lightweight, tuneful fish-out-of-water comedy set in an exotic locale featuring a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby-ish pair with a healthy dose of sex and romanc

Review - Lost In The Stars

February 5, 2011

In April of 1949, Rodgers and Hammerstein shocked the Theatre World by writing a song for their new musical professing that humans developed racial prejudice by nurture and not by nature.

Review - Gruesome Playground Injuries: Glad To Be Unhappy

February 4, 2011

The New York stage is often a haven for self-destructive couples on display, but rarely is that self-destruction so bluntly in view as in Rajiv Joseph's intriguing Gruesome Playground Injuries.

Review - What The Public Wants: Turn Off The Dark

February 2, 2011

Though I try to avoid pronouncing century-old plays as being as relevant today they were a hundred years ago, a little tweaking here and there - perhaps the mentioning of a critically acclaimed musical that fails at the box office while another that suffers from horrible pre-opening word of mouth ne

Review - Knickerbocker Holiday

January 31, 2011

Back in the 1930s, when hip New Yorkers got their doses of political satire by taking in the latest Broadway musical comedy, it wasn't uncommon for then-President FDR to pop up in a show; either in person, as played by George M.

Review - The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: It Gets Better

January 28, 2011

I'm usually not one to sit in judgment of my journalistic colleagues but when one of them is up on stage performing, what's a theatre critic to do? Fortunately, I can honestly report that Matt Windman, known for his snappy reviews in amNew York and on Theatremania.

Review - Abbie & The Misanthrope

January 27, 2011

Actors who bear a substantial resemblance to a legendary celebrity or historical figure are often inspired to turn that stroke of luck into a one-person show.

Review - Carnival Round The Central Figure

January 21, 2011

The central figure of Diana Amsterdam's tragedy of manners is a young, terminally ill accountant named Paul (Ted Caine) who spends most of the evening silently lying in a hospital bed surrounded by a carnival of denial.

Review - Blood From A Stone

January 20, 2011

First-time playwright Tommy Nohilly seems intent on ramming edgy family dysfunctions in the audience's faces with Blood From A Stone.

Review - The Importance of Being Earnest: Namely You

January 18, 2011

How remarkably tragic it is that the triumphant opening night of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, perhaps the greatest comedy ever penned in the English language, was also the event that led to the author's personal downfall and eventual public and financial ruin.

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