OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

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 ...

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 ...