OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

The trouble all started when Jule Styne composed a score for Funny Girl that Fanny Brice could not possibly have sung. ...

When Isaiah Sheffer first walked into the dilapidated movie house on Broadway and 95th Street in the late '70s he saw some kind of makeshift boxing ring on the creaky stage.  But what he envisioned was a great center for the arts on the Upper West Side that filled the wide cultural gap between Linc...

The Screwtape Letters are not for everyone. It is good to say that right off the bat, just to be clear. Adapted from the C.S. Lewis novel about spiritual warfare, and told from a demon's point of view, this play reads a whole lot like a series of warped philosophical lectures on the human condition....

During my first theater job in New York, I was asked to go to a reading of a play called The Mistakes Madeleine Made, by Elizabeth Meriwether. The play - about a young woman facing family tragedy and a fear of cleanliness -- ended up being produced by Naked Angels, and I've remembered it fondly for ...

Theater Breaking Through Barriers produces Kate Moira Ryan's nearly-funny comedy 'Bass For Picasso', featuring the company's traditional blend of differently-abled actors....

Erotic Broadway has returned to New York City with a new edition entitled 'Vintage Variety.' The revue, which enjoyed a sold out run in the summer and fall of last year, is now scheduled to play once a month at The Triad....

As the saying goes 'size matters.' Here in America we like things big: big cars, big paychecks, big plates of food, and even big hairdos. Given our proclivity for all things huge it is no surprise that the struggle to measure up goes further than just material possessions. Sure, big muscles can be g...

Shakespeare is commissioned to write about current events in Bill Cain's fascinating new drama, currently running at Manhattan Theater Club....

The Red Fern Theatre Company presents seven new plays imagining the New York of 30 years from now with angst and wit....

The issue of abortion gets a decidedly one-sided study in Jonathan Reynolds' newest play, currently running at the Flea....

This country-fried musical revue celebrates Southern women, but never quite comes together. ...

Parsons Dance REMEMBER ME is an all-new version of last season's collaboration with choreographer David Parsons the lead vocalists of East Village Opera Company (EVOC), featuring the music of their rock opera band....

Sex. Masturbation. Porn. These are topics that our society shies away from openly discussing, at least within the daylight hours. America is not a land where candid talks about one's self-pleasuring habits are commonplace. We can see an arm blown off on TV but we can't hear the word vagina without g...

Brilliant Traces at Theatrelab Brilliant Traces opens with a bang. More specifically it opens with several bangs and a shout and a disheveled woman in a wedding dress bursting onto the scene in a mighty erratic ball of energy....

Alternative Theatre Company presents Joe Marshall's 'The Gayest Christmas Pageant Ever!', a tepid comedy about a struggling West Hollywood LGBT Theatre putting on a Christmas show....

I had the immense pleasure of taking another visit to Grover's Corners, New Hampshire last week, via the fascinating David Cromer production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town that opened in February at the Barrow Street Theatre. Back then I wrote that the director's non-traditional take on the play - wh...

The Keen Company delivers a finely nuanced production of five Thornton Wilder short plays, which show the playwright's concern with matters spiritual and secular....

A couple of years ago I went to The Flea Theater and had a fun time with A.R. Gurney's then newest play, Post Mortem. It was a clever little piece taking place in the future about a college student writing his thesis on a long-forgotten playwright named A.R. Gurney, and was filled with self-referen...

On the night when baseball's all-stars were blasting dingers into the bleachers of Yankee Stadium, the cast of Scott Siegel's A Night At The Operetta, was having their own home run derby on the stage of Town Hall, knocking melodies by Victor Herbert, Sigmund Romberg and Rudolf Friml out of the park....

Michael Reidel reports today that Bebe Neuwirth has been signed to play Morticia in Andrew Lippa, Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman's new Addams Family musical and that Nathan Lane is being sought to play hubby Gomez.  That's all very well and good but the casting coup I'd like to see is Adam “C...

The time had already come and passed for The Faux Marx Brothers & Co. to hit the stage with the final performance of The York Theatre's Mufti production of Minnie's Boys on Sunday night when Producing Artistic Director Jim Morgan announced that the show had to be held up a bit because there were peo...

Lighting designer R. Lee Kennedy has a planetarium's worth of stars flooding the Connolly Theatre's stage at the outset of Transport Group's production of Nancy Shayne's new musical, Marcy In The Galaxy. But gleaming through the clusters is the face of Donna Lynne Champlin, shining with hopefulness...

You know those very annoying packs of young drunkards you run into around 3am or so while wandering the bar-stuffed streets of the Lower East Side or the West Village, trying to find the nearest open pizza joint or Gray's Papaya in a quest to carbo-absorb the evening's alcoholic intake? The kind th...

February of 2008 has turned out to be a heck of a terrific month for non-traditional and daring Off-Broadway musicals. (Do we have any more opening by tomorrow night?) Following the exhilarating Next To Normal and the entrancingly Dadaist The Blue Flower we now have Joshua Schmidt (music and libre...

It took barely a sip of post-theatre cocktail for one of my companions to breathe a mournful sigh in memory of the lost art of letter writing. I imagine this was not the first time such sentiments were expressed following a performance of Vita & Virginia, Eileen Atkins' cerebrally romantic stage pi...