OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

They say you can get a lot of things on Craig's List; a date… a job… arrested… But actor and stand-up comic Bob Greenberg got the title of Best Alfred Hitchcock Look-A-Like of 2008. BroadwayWorld was on hand for photo coverage of that prestigious competition when it was held a couple of week...

Ah, there's nothing like watching the marriage of a pair of tortured intellectuals crumble before our eyes from the safe distance of an auditorium seat to happily send audience members to the nearest nightcap retreat with that special glow that comes from a satisfying night at the theatre. And acto...

Okay, so New York City Opera has commissioned Philip Glass to write a new opera about Walt Disney. Let's start taking bets. How many clueless parents are going to be taking their toddlers because they assume the Disney name means it's for kids?...

As I was leaving the Mint Theatre after their simply marvelous production of J.B. Priestly's 1957 drama, The Glass Cage, I overheard a woman saying to her companion, 'That play had everything! Greed… love… revenge… sex… everything!'...

'Only the great deserve the darts of satire,' proclaimed an advertisement for the New York leg of the Bolshoi Ballet Company's 1936 American tour, a classy reply to the spoofing they were receiving from George Balanchine's dance piece La Princesse Zenobia, a highlight of George Abbott and Rodgers an...

While the phrase 'Shakespeare in the Park' brings to most New Yorker's minds thoughts of getting up early and waiting in line for hours to see one of the Public Theater's Delecorte productions, savvy Gothamites know that the warmer weather annually brings dozens of free outdoor Shakespeare performan...

There's an interesting point buried beneath the innocuous entertainment of writer/director Roger Bean's The Marvelous Wonderettes, a somewhat cute little show utilizing girl group and female soloist pop hits from the 1950s and 60s. Unfortunately, that interesting point could have easily been made w...

It's my firm belief that if composer Leroy Anderson, lyricist Joan Ford and bookwriter/lyricists Walter & Jean Kerr had named their brash and funny 1958 musical comedy about the love/hate relationship between a silent movie director and his reluctant star anything other than Goldilocks, it might not...

The vocal miracle that is Marilyn Maye is once again working magic in the cozy confines of The Metropolitan Room, where, in the past two years, she's opened a wondrous quartet of engagements to break a 16-year exile from Manhattan....

Dan Wackerman, Artistic Director and frequent stage director for the Peccadillo Theatre Company, has regularly displayed a golden touch for mounting crackling revivals of long-forgotten Broadway plays like Elmer Rice's Counsellor-at-Law, Dorothy Parker and Arnaud d'Usseau's The Ladies of the Corrido...

Though it took She Loves Me's Ilona Ritter just one trip to the library to discover the magic of books, musical theatre's bookwriters have traditionally been underappreciated for their vital contributions and dramatic artistry. This morning I actually blurted out at my computer screen, 'Damn, why d...

Marty Geiger is one of those colorful theatre junkies I often run into during intermissions or on chat boards. A robust gentleman of 60 and a lawyer by trade, he decided two years ago to venture into the world of cabaret performing. When I took my seat for his new show at Don't Tell Mama, Summer B...

Attractive people saying bitchy things while wearing sexy outfits and drinking too much. No it's not another BroadwayWorld staff meeting, but New York Daily News entertainment writer Patrick Huguenin's Paper Dolls, a funny and promising new play about the world of celebrity gossip that just closed ...

Though earlier in the primaries he admitted to being bored by showtunes like 'Oklahoma' in grade school, this Comedy Central article proves that Barack Obama has since developed quite the savvy taste for musical theatre. Unfortunately, the article fails to mention that John McCain was the original ...

Thanks to the gang at [title of show] the new parlor game sweeping the nation (or at least Chelsea) is to come up with unusual names for drag queens. The best one I could think of was 'Belle Jar' but Mike Ceceri of North Shore Music Theatre came up with what I humbly consider to be the best one eva...

Imagine Hamlet infused with a shot or two of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and you'll get an idea of the atmosphere of Moonwork's very clever and entertaining Bound In A Nutshell. Adaptors Gregory Sherman and Gregory Wolfe (who also directs) craft a new script exclusively out of lines from Shakes...

I'm all for creative non-traditional casting, but is Katie Holmes now playing Joe Keller, the successful businessman accused of selling faulty airplane parts to the U.S. government during World War II, in the upcoming Broadway revival of All My Sons? I only ask because this MSNBC blurb is about ho...

While the creators of Desir may have had La Ronde in mind while dreaming up their sensual fantasia of backstage trysts, the sight of so many buff fellas in period undergarments, which, with all due respect to the sensational athletic skills on display, are certainly a selling point of the evening, r...

In this amusing and somewhat bittersweet interview with the BBC, Ruthie Henshall tells of being smuggled into Buckingham Palace regularly after performances of Cats in order to visit her secret boyfriend, Prince Edward. Though she was in love with the British royal, the relationship ended because s...

Yes, she sings it. And if you've never heard her sing it as a full-fledged, poised, articulate, sexy and self-effacingly humorous adult then you haven't really heard her sing it yet....

I never thought of myself as especially gossipy. Surely there are at least two other Michaels in this burg who set the gold standard at reporting that sort of stuff. But when ace press agent Richard Kornberg, the man who convinced half the city that Ben Brantley loved In My Life, says, 'Come here,...

Please forgive my delay, dear readers, in jotting down a few thoughts on the latest Scott Siegel enterprise, the second annual All Singin', All Dancin', which scorched the Town Hall stage last Monday night. What with a bundle of new shows to take in since then (and a biggie opening up tonight) some...

If the old chestnut about life imitating art doesn't cross your mind a couple of times during A.R. Gurney's new comedy, Buffalo Gal, you may want to make a copy of The Cherry Orchard part of your subway reading this week. But brushing up your Chekhov isn't completely necessary to enjoy this funny l...

An orchestra ticket for Thurgood, with one actor and a modest set, costs nearly as much as one for August: Osage County, which has a large cast and an elaborate design. Orchestra seats for [title of show] aren't much cheaper than those for The Lion King. With Broadway prices what they are, do you ...

Playgoers with fond memories of wholesomely sexy television comedies like Love, American Style and The Love Boat may get a kick out of Flamingo Court, Luigi Creatore's trio of one-acts about romance among elderly Florida retirees. The octogenarian playwright most known to Broadway audiences for hav...