OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

Just in time for the centennial of the great lyricist's bar mitzvah, Mark Nadler arrives at The Metropolitan Room with a smashing celebration of the words of Ira Gershwin. Titled ...His Lovely Wife, Ira, after an infamous fopaux made by a British radio announcer, Nadler explains his mission here is...

I suppose if Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill ever took a crack at writing theatre for young Weimar audiences, their effort might have had a strong likeness to Stephin Merritt and David Greenspan's creepily enchanting fantasy, Coraline, receiving a production from MCC that's far too interesting for vie...

One of the many reasons I've been a fan of the Opening Doors Theatre Company since their debut production of Bring Back Birdie two-and-a-half years ago is the consistent ability of their directors and choreographers to have as many as a dozen actors singing and dancing on the small cabaret stage of ...

Two possibilities crossed my mind when I counted 85 selections on the song list for For Lovers Only (Love Songs... Nothing But Love Songs); either I was about to see a musical revue of Götterdämmerung-like proportions or there were going to be a lot of medleys....

A Union Square Park bench, frequently occupied by the brilliant stage and screen director Tom O'Horgan, will be dedicated in his honor this coming Sunday, May 3rd at 1pm on the occasion of what would have been his 85th birthday. The first director ever to have four productions running simultaneous o...

Perhaps shows would get better reviews if they all offered critics free champagne before the performance and unlimited trips to the chocolate waterfall at intermission, but even without the edge-removing libations and shots of sugar buzz, Cirque du Soleil's Kooza, now drawing gasps and cheers under ...

'Sometimes life just is preposterous, you know,' screams a frustrated character trying to get another to believe his corner of the jigsaw puzzle of interlocking plots in Craig Lucas' eclectically styled comedy/drama, The Singing Forest; a play that takes us from 21st Century New York to 1930s Vienna...

As is frequently noted by lovers of strong book musicals, part of the brilliance of Sherman Edwards (score) and Peter Stone's (book) 1776, their 1969 Broadway tuner about the efforts of John Adams to convince the continental congress to vote for independency from Great Britain, is that the audience ...

I'm assuming that whatever Tina Howe is trying to get across in Chasing Manet, her disappointing new play receiving a well-acted mounting by Primary Stages, is contained in a lengthy speech Jane Alexander delivers early in the first act....

You know you're in for a good one when there's a huge laugh before the first person on stage can even let out the third syllable of the show. But by the time the actors start growling to customers, 'There's no intermission!' and 'The show's eight hours long!' The Toxic Avenger has firmly establishe...

Legendary playwright Robert Patrick shares some thoughts and remembrances of the late Jack Wrangler......

While the new musical by James Hindman (book) and Ellen Weiss (score) appears to be a promising work in progress, Transport Group's premiere production of Being Audrey, helmed by the company's Artistic Director Jack Cummings III, is loaded with bright, shiny charms that display their material in a d...

'Men like women with character,' is the sisterly advice a muddied, snarling, grief-stricken and murderously-crazed Elektra gives to pretty little Chrysothemis in Ann Carson's wildly clever adaptation of the ancient Greek story of bloody family doings titled An Oresteia. Growled in all seriousness b...

Though probably best known to theatre folk as author of the long-running Broadway comedy, Luv, Murray Schisgal first hit it big with the Off-Broadway double bill of one-acts, The Typists and The Tiger, and the short play form continues to be a steady part of the 81-year-old humorist's repertoire....

While there are laws restricting the tattooing of minors, the unseen infant title character in Christina Anderson's Inked Baby has the unfortunate honor to be indelibly marked even before birth. The play's premiere production at Playwrights Horizons' Peter Jay Sharp Theater is honored with a fine c...

If the gang at Madison Avenue were looking for the perfect spokesmodel to help win support for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, they couldn't have done better than Rosa Parks, a sweet-looking, modestly dressed woman who spoke with quiet dignity. Or Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, J...

Though The Paper Mill Playhouse has just opened Master Class and still has productions of 1776 and The Full Monty geared up for their current season, plans are zipping along for the four musicals and one straight play that will make up their 2009-10 campaign. The official announcement comes this Fr...

While The Mint Theater Company built its well-earned reputation as New York's leading archivists of plays they proudly proclaim as 'worthy but neglected,' their latest ventures suggest they may want to consider adopting the new slogan, 'I betcha didn't know (insert name of literary giant here) wrote...

Whether the Prospect Theater Company is presenting a Dadaist piece about the birth of Dada or a kick-ass musical comedy about Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths putting on a show for the Soviet Union, the theatregoer's eye will inevitable be drawn to the elegantly simple dome that towers above their West End ...

It was believed by many back in 1932, as it still is today, that the only reason Eugene O'Neill was not awarded that year's Pulitzer Prize for his Mourning Becomes Electra, an epic retelling of Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy that declares Sigmund Freud as the true victor of the American Civil War, was ...

It's a somewhat tricky business describing what makes Donald Margulies' new play, Shipwrecked! An Entertainment - The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself), a worthwhile venture without revealing details best discovered during the performance. Those familiar with the true st...

'I'm a retired businessman,' the title character of Richard Krevolin and Joseph Bologna's new solo play, Lansky, keeps insisting. 'An honest businessman who kept clean and accurate books.'...

Although operetta wasn't completely on its way out when Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II brought Music In The Air to Broadway in 1932, the popularity of the genre was indeed waning a bit as jazzy and witty scores by the likes of George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter dominated...

While waiting for my guest to return from the ladies room after Monday night's performance of J.T. Rogers' White People, I amused myself by observing the faces of those exiting the theatre and waiting for the elevator to take them up to street level. The white people in the audience were generally ...

If you can't tell the players without a scorecard at Charles Busch's charming new comedy, The Third Story, or if you need to visit the rest room in the middle of act one and, when you return to your seat, you get the strangest feeling you've entered the wrong auditorium, that's perhaps a little bit ...