OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

There's much to be admired in director/adaptor Moises Kaufman's staging of Tennessee Williams' unproduced screenplay based on his 1942 short story, One Arm.  If not exactly completely satisfying theatre, it is certainly a nobly-intended and well-executed curiosity....

Although there have been previous productions of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World since the musical premiered in Los Angeles eight years ago, thanks to a 13-year-old girl's fondness for Friday, the show has never been more relevant....

Though playwright Rachel Crothers was regarded as the toast of the town for many a Broadway season - she had 29 plays debut there in the years between 1906 and 1940 - she's scarcely know by 21st Century playgoers.  Fortunately, the Mint Theater Company has been doing its part to return her name to ...

Under Artistic Director Cara Reichel, the Prospect Theater Company has earned a reputation for presenting unconventional musicals that explore interesting topics and their newest entry, I Married Wyatt Earp, co-produced with New York Theatre Barn as part of 59E59 Theater's 'Americas Off Broadway' se...

Be Careful! The Sharks Will Eat You! continues its run at the Stage Left Studio. Written and performed by Jay Alvarez and directed by Theresa Gambacorta, Be Careful! recounts Alvarez' family and their harrowing escape from early 1960s Cuba. Alvarez takes the audience on a trip from revolution to th...

Though the current tenants at the Eugene O'Neil claim to be presenting 'God's Favorite Musical,' the new gang moving into Circle In The Square this October may have something to say about that as the first Broadway revival of Godspell gears up for a November 7th opening....

With an uneventful 6pm coming and going on the evening of May 21st, I rested comfortably that night secure in the knowledge that any predictions of the arrival of Judgment Day were, at the very least, miscalculations.  But the next evening, as I sat watching David Burnham, Sally Mayes, Howard McGil...

Those who miss the patter of little urbanites that made Thursday night sitcoms so popular in the 1990s should welcome the arrival of Jonathan Marc Sherman's angsty new comedy, Knickerbocker; a play generously populated by an assortment of smart, funny and hip New Yorkers whose charm lies in their ab...

While older plays can often be interpreted to suit modern tastes and standards, films serve as permanent records of the public attitudes of their times; particularly when considering the ways ethnic minorities were portrayed.  Many a fine film from long ago can contain moments that strike the moder...

Gotham Burlesque however breaks through the malaise of this neo-burlesque to give the audience a thoroughly fun ninety minutes. These talented performers did a great job not only performing the art of the striptease but also finding the humor in the art. Gypsy Rose Lee would be proud. ...

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'This is kind of a weird play. I'll show you what I mean,' offers Bernard (Brian Hutchison), the character who opens David Greenspan's Go Back To Where You Are with a nostalgic monologue about childhood summers at a family Long Island beach house that sets a tone somewhat akin to that of a Tennessee...

'One man's facts are another man's fabrications,' notes Ghassan (Ted Sod) as he and several other characters in Mona Mansour's Urge For Going try to explain to the audience the circumstances that brought this family of Palestinian Arabs to live in a South Lebanese refugee camp that has been serving...

'Let me tell you something.  I find my husband so Goddamned irritating that I'm planning to leave him.'...

Matthew Lopez's gripping new play is running at Manhattan Theater Club....

For nearly 300 years, theatre scholars have doubtEd Lewis Theobald's claim that his Double Falsehood was an adaptation of Cardenio, a lost collaboration by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher.  But the recent acceptance of highly-regarded publisher Arden Shakespeare has, in the eyes of many, prov...

No, dear playgoers, the fact that you've ventured into an unmarked building on a dark SoHo street, walked down a long hallway draped in red and are now in an open loft sitting mere inches away from a young couple enthusiastically going at it in a standing position up against one of the building's pi...

With a solidly funny book by Larry Gelbart and Bert Shevelove and a clever, under-appreciated score by Stephen Sondheim (It remains Broadway's only Best Musical Tony-winner with eligible music and lyrics that were not even nominated for Best Score.), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is...

Although I'll admit to not being completely familiar with Cole Porter's See America First and George M. Cohan's The Governor's Son, it's quite possible that Frank Loesser's score for Where's Charley? could be considered the finest Broadway debut for a composer/lyricist who would eventually occupy a ...

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.  A similar comparison might be made for composer/lyricist Joe Iconis' Things To Ruin, which in the past several years has played New York engagements in ...

Though the sexual revolution was revving into full force in 1965, you'd never know it by America's popular entertainment.  Barbara Eden may have been dressed in a belly dancer outfit while starring in the new hit series, I Dream of Jeannie, but the network censors made sure her belly remained cover...

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.  Why was the versatile comic actor, Christian Borle, fresh from an acclaimed dramatic turn as Prior Walter in Signatur...

Austin, Texas-based ensemble, The Rude Mechanicals (fondly known as the Rude Mechs) are creating a spectacle at the Dance Theater Workshop with Kirk Lynn's THE METHOD GUN....

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...

The most touching, delicately nuanced and beautifully realized work in The Public Theater's premiere production of Compulsion is, quite honestly, a wooden performance.   Rinne Groff's fictionalized tale of the Broadway dramatization of Anne Frank's diary begins with a life-sized marionette depicti...