OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

Creating new opportunities for beautiful blondes with enchanting soprano voices is a topic generally not included in discussions of non-traditional casting in the theatre, but when it was announced that Kelli O'Hara would be starring in the Encores! concert production of Bells Are Ringing instead of...

While the campy antics of Devil Boys From Beyond may suggest an unlikely blend of screwball classics like His Girl Friday with infamous sci-fi fare such as Plan 9 From Outer Space, the movie title that kept popping into my mind was Clash of The Titans.  Not because of the mythical physiques of beef...

Sure, in America the guilty have just as much a right to a fair trial as the innocent.  But when someone you believe is guilty doesn't get one, is that a wrong you can be all that enthused about righting?  That's one of the discussion points that might be mulled over by leftist radicals downing sh...

While Ira Levin will forever be remembered as the novelist who made the phrases 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'Stepford Wives' indelible entries into American pop culture, devotees of musical theatre fondly regard him as the bookwriter/lyricist for one of Broadway's more intriguing flops, 1965's Drat! The C...

Our Postmodern Town might be a more descriptive title for Will Eno's Middletown, a play that coats the Thornton Wilder standard of normal American life as it pertains to the cycle of life and death with a whitewash of Samuel Beckett absurdity.  And if even half of the play's two hours contained the...

Early on in Lisa Kron's politically-charged romantic comedy/drama, In The Wake, audiences are reminded of a scene that traditionally takes place in many American households every fourth Thursday of November.  While the rest of the family is ready to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, there's one per...

Abigail Grotke... a real-life person named Abigail Grotke... has been collecting vintage books on relationship advice for 25 years, amassing over a thousand volumes published from 1822 to 1978, with titles such as The Unfair Sex, She Cooks to Conquer, How to Get a Teen-Age Boy and What To Do With Hi...

Perhaps not content with merely being the best comic actress on the New York stage, Jan Maxwell follows her hilarious turns in last season's revivals of The Royal Family and Lend Me A Tenor by refreshing her dramatic chops a with a riveting, edge of your seat performance in John Doyle's senses-tingl...

'Let's see if we can do this without a microphone,' peeped Jo Sullivan Loesser, as she prepared to fill the 1,495-seat Town Hall with 'Somebody, Somewhere,' which she introduced in the 1956 original Broadway production of The Most Happy Fella.  While the age of the widow of the great Frank Loesser ...

This past Friday afternoon I read that this person has been meeting with producers to consider the possibility of appearing on Broadway, in order to, 'expand her brand by taking to the stage.'  That evening I heard the 82-year-old Marilyn Maye, after nearly ninety minutes of superlative interpretat...

When asked how she kept her voice strong and healthy week after week while starring on Broadway, Ethel Merman famously quipped, 'You have to live like a f***ing nun!'  If that's the case then I suppose Scott Shepherd should be up for sainthood any day now.  In Gatz, the Elevator Repair Service's c...

Though set designer Anna Louizos supplies a realistically grimy subway platform for Primary Stages' mounting of the new a cappella musical In Transit, the characters scurrying underground are disappointingly squeaky clean....

It's always a good sign when you walk into a theatre for a comedy and right away the set is making you laugh.  Such was the case for me with the playful space Jo Winiarski created for the Pearl Theatre Company's uproariously funny mounting of The Sneeze, Michael Frayn's vaudevillian octet of comedi...

Michael Frayn's 1975 comedy, Alphabetical Order, is the type of play that, either as a compliment or as a dismissal, American audiences are likely to label as 'very British.'  Its humor is subtle, its themes are sub-textual and the characters all talk in these funny accents.  But even those who ap...

While Sarah Ruhl and director Rebecca Taichman haven't exactly made children's theatre out of Virginia Woolf's transgendering 1928 novel, Orlando (unless you approve of full adult nudity in your kiddie matinees), there are generous doses of playful whimsy in this well-mounted CSC production; though ...

Perhaps it's a sign of economic hardship continuing to plague Off-Broadway that not one drop of V-8 Vegetable Juice Cocktail is poured over the leading lady's head, nor is even one slice of watermelon smacked onto an actor's skull in Ivo van Hove's deliciously stark and chilly interpretation of Lill...

I suppose it's about time someone came up with a name for that genre of plays where a handful of actors each impersonate a varied assortment of characters to tell a sprawling story, i.e., The 39 Steps, The Complete Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged).  When that jolly day arrives certainly Chris Weikel'...

There's a strong essence of familiarity to be whiffed at Edward Albee's latest, Me, Myself & I, especially if you have fond memories of his far superior absurdist effort, The Play About The Baby.  Once again there's a bickering couple bearing a strong resemblance to an older version of ...Virginia ...

After reading far too many obituaries claiming, while not exactly mourning, the death of the Broadway musical, insisting that the art form can only be revived by injections of the kind of music that appeals to today's young audiences, I decided to take a night off from cabarets and piano bars a coup...

It's not shaping up to be a very promising season for alumni of The Carol Burnett Show.  Just like the recently closed Viagra Falls, Kenny Solms' It Must Be Him offers a terrific company of comical pros working hard to inject any mirth possible into ninety minutes of tepid material....

Though Teresa Deevy was arguably the world's most famous female playwright in 1942, the year she completed her class-conscious romance Wife To James Whelan, the new management of Dublin's Abbey Theatre, which had already produced six of her plays, turned it down.  The once-prolific career of the dr...

'I should have taken the jail time,' moans the solo character in Randy Cohen's The Punishing Blow, not quite under his breath....

Lovers of the hair bands of 70s, 80s and 90s who find Rock of Ages just too intellectually complex shall rejoice at the arrival of Power Balladz, the show that puts the 'z' in 'rock anthem.'  I'm just not certain where exactly it puts it....

I was forty-five years old when a theatre professional I greatly admired first took me out to lunch to discuss his lifetime of experience and my fledgling career as a critic.  If my mother were alive to see it, I'm sure she would find nothing creepy about the scene.  But in his frequently clever c...

Congratulations to David Burtka and Neil Patrick Harris who are expecting twins this fall by way of a surrogate.  Now there's two kids who are going to have the entire score of Les Misérables memorized by the time they're five....