OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

I'll readily admit to letting out a quiet, though not exactly inaudible, 'Wow,' as I entered the main auditorium at 59E59 and took a first glimpse at Kris Stone's New York apartment set for Primary Stages' premiere production of Cusi Cram's A Lifetime Burning. The high-ceilinged collection of sharp ...

While I certainly wouldn't suggest that Andrea McArdle has been living in the past, that's where she's spent most of her Broadway career; first getting noticed as the Depression-era social climber in Annie, and then nabbing roles in Les Misérables, State Fair and Beauty and The Beast (Hey, 'once up...

The star of Town Hall's 3rd Annual All Singin', All Dancin', the traditional finale to the Scott Siegel-created Broadway Summer Festival, didn't take the stage until the end of curtain calls, but his vibrant presence was felt throughout the evening....

Let's get one thing straight right from the start. Men do not write monologues about their penises. They don't. Men don't say things like, 'I'm worried about penises,' and they don't require a context of other penises in order to understand this limb that dangles between their legs and jumps up l...

A good musical will often send audience members out of the theatre wanting to pick up a copy of the cast album. But the new musical version of Jack Heifner's 1976 Off-Broadway hit, Vanities, might send more than a few attendees to the public library to read a copy of the playscript, or at least hop...

While the title of Town Hall's third annual production of Broadway's Rising Stars suggests a look into the future, I prefer to linger a bit in the present. With a cast consisting of 22 recent grads from such musical theatre savvy institutions as NYU, Carnegie Mellon, AMDA and The Cincinnati Conserv...

'If they don't know who the hell I am by now,' the evening's star deadpans to the Metropolitan Room staff member who asks if she has any press releases to distribute, 'they can just cut open my neck and count the rings.'...

You know it's all heading in this direction, don't you? So why delay the inevitable and let's make 2010 the first year where America Votes For The Tony Awards!...

The marquees of Broadway will once again dim tonight; not to honor a great actor or playwright or director but to commemorate the passing of Harry Edelstein, owner of the theatre district's legendary Café Edison....

The entirety of The Public Theater's positively scrumptious new Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night is played on and around designer John Lee Beatty's grassy field, which is dominated by two large hills. It's the kind of setting that might remind you of dozens of locales in Central ...

While collectors of musical theatre trivia may be quick to mention that Anika Larsen - the cherubic-looking blonde with the belty R&B voice - was the only performer to be in both the original Broadway cast of Xanadu and the original Off-Broadway cast of Zanna, Don't!, it's her unusual upbringing tha...

Along with contempt, familiarity is also pretty good at breeding hit Broadway musicals. Take The Wiz, for example; the perfectly pleasant but sketchily written 1975 Tony winner for Best Musical that, if it weren't based on L. Frank Baum's classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (which became an iconic Am...

While the casting of Phylicia Rashad as the manipulative, pill-addicted matriarch of Oklahoma's abundantly dysfunctionAl Weston family in Tracy Letts' epic comedy/drama, August: Osage County may seem an odd choice for those who only know the actress from her television roles as the elegant Clair Hux...

If you're old enough to recall the pre-Jimmy Carter era of American comedy, when dark pieces like Jules Pfeiffer's Little Murders and Robert Altman's MASH drew humor from a sense of being emotionally anaesthetized from the ugliness of your surroundings, you may be tricked into assuming that Theresa ...

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......