OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

When the York Theatre first presented its mainstage mounting of Enter Laughing back in September I wrote that, while far too early to tell, it might well wind up being the funniest, most entertaining production of a musical we'll see this season. Four months later, I must admit that it has indeed b...

For the past few weeks I've been enjoying Gotham's slight theatrical lull that began just before Christmas and seems to have ended with the inauguration. Oh, it's not that nothing has been opening, but the relative scarcity of new Broadway shows and high-profile Off-Broadway productions has given m...

ImagiNe You're in Washington DC watching your father receive the National Medal of Arts, but you're more exited about dad's co-honoree, the man who helped turn your life in a direction away from your father, Stephen Sondheim. That was the unique experience of Dan Guerrero, star and author of ¡Gayt...

I just got back from Avery Fisher Hall, where Frank Rich was partaking in a fireside chat (sans fireside) with Stephen Sondheim. I scribbled down as much as I could from the 90 minute conversation. Some of the more interesting topics included the inability for most theatre critics to critique the ...

You don't need an economic crisis to appreciate some good theatre at less than the price of a top shelf martini but at $15 a pop the Fifth Annual Under The Radar Festival (running through Sunday at various venues, but mostly at The Public Theater) can keep you stimulated all day with an internationa...

As Broadway prepares for another mounting of Hair, the theatre community has received the sad news that the innovative director who helped make that musical such a success, Tom O'Horgan, has passed away. I asked the legendary and colorful playwright Robert Patrick to share a remembrance......

It's such a shame that Second Stage's crackling production of Becky Shaw, Gina Gionfriddo's comedy of ill manners, is scheduled to close on February 1st. I can't think of a better Valentine's Day entertainment for cynically single urbanites looking to combat the champagne and roses splendor with wh...

Ah, it's that time of year again when, while most theatergoers are assembling their lists of the top (and sometimes bottom) plays and musicals of the year, I prefer to focus on ten memorable moments that perhaps relatively few got to see. These moments don't necessarily come from the ten best produ...

The daffy and delightful Christine Pedi's newest cabaret concoction, the Jolly Holly Christmas Folly is an inviting cocktail mixing old favorites with a few new routines; very merry, raucously funny and abundantly cheery....

Anyone who saw Mary Bond Davis as Broadway's original Motormouth Maybelle in Hairspray, or in her many cabaret and concert performances, knows that woman can sizzle on stage. But now viewers of The Food Network have a chance to see how she sizzles in the kitchen....

I somehow doubt that, despite Broadway's struggles in the current economy, Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez would be so cynical as to use the title of this entry as their new 'For Now' lyric in Avenue Q, but since it's only a matter of weeks before the sharply satirical children's educational musical for ...

Eugene O'Neill might not have been the first playwright to have time come to a halt mid-conversation while characters reveal hidden thoughts through internal monologues - a technique I'm sure is familiar to more Americans through Groucho Marx's spoof of his Strange Interlude in the film version of A...

Everyone has their own idea of what makes great theatre. For some it's adventurous writing, for others it's well-detailed performances and for others it's dazzling production values. More often it's a combination of many qualities. Whatever your definition of great theatre is, where in New York a...

'We love you, Liza!,' a faint, but audible voice yelled from what seemed to be a far corner of the Palace Theatre's mezzanine. And though the 62-year-old entertainer was understandably still catching her breath after a spirited vaudevillian delivery of Styne, Comden & Green's tongue-twisting comic m...

'Why do I feel like a fucking tourist in my own neighborhood!?!' That is the angry, anguished cry of Robert, a Polish-Puerto Rican native of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who has seen the crime and neglect of his lifelong neighborhood remedied by a gentrifying influx of high-end restaurants, art galler...

Penned by a pair of downtown revue writers (Betty Comden and Adolph Green), composed by a wunderkind New York Philharmonic conductor (Leonard Bernstein), choreographed by a Ballet Theatre soloist (Jerome Robbins) and originally directed by musical comedy master George Abbott, there's never been a mu...

'Sooner or later we're bound to get it right.' That's the final line of Road Show, the new Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical, directed by John Doyle, that's opened at The Public. It was also the final line of Bounce, the Harold Prince directed previous version of Road Show, which for a time was ...

Yes, I know… Bury The Dead is not exactly the kind of title that's going to send box office sales into a tizzy. And sure, the Connelly Theatre, located on 4th Street between Avenues A & B, may be a perfectly lovely and intimate venue but it's a bit of an unpleasant hike from the nearest subway s...

I believe it was Chekhov who said that if a hammer appears on stage in the first act, somebody better use it to build a shelf in the second act. Well, Adam Rapp's Kindness contains no carpentry but there is quite a bit of suspense involving the appearance of a hammer. And while the play, directed ...

If you're feeling nostalgic for those sweet innocent days when guys could continually act like self-centered jerks and intelligent, attractive women would sleep with them anyway, a trip to Second Stage's funny and energetic revival of Howard Korder's Boy's Life is certainly in order....

Thanks to my BroadwayWorld colleague Adrienne Onofri for sending me this video of a showtune singin' hockey mom making her political preference known....

Although Mike Daisey's exploration of national defense, past and present, If You See Something Say Something, arrives at Joe's Pub just in time to serve as a companion piece to the Metropolitan Opera's production of Dr. Atomic, there is nothing minimalist about this monologist. He may spend the ent...

Three years ago I named D'Jamin Bartlett's performance of 'The Miller's Son' at BroadwayWorld's Standing Ovations IV concert, thirty-two years after she introduced the song in A Little Night Music, as one of my most memorable theatre moments of 2005. I may have to put her back on the list for 2008....

It's perfectly understandable if years from now, or maybe fifteen minutes after leaving the theatre, the only thing you clearly remember about the Roundabout's new production of A Man For All Seasons is Frank Langella's extraordinary performance as the highly-principled Chancellor of England, Sir Th...

Lee Blessing's plays have always shown a wonderful knack for vivid story-telling (A Walk In The Woods, Cobb), but in his new Off-Broadway offering, A Body Of Water, the author is intentionally not telling us the story. Likewise, I won't be completely telling you the story of why I found the piece, ...