It’s nice getting asked to see shows before they go to Edinburgh: you get the drop on the Scotsman critic in finding a gem or a disaster.Sadly, Ten Pence Short’s new play Hot Air is quite firmly in the latt…

I first came into contact with Hans Teeuwen last year when he played at Battersea Arts Centre following his Edinburgh run and in advance of a Dutch TV taping at the Leicester Square Theatre. At the time I was …

(Another short Edinburgh preview review)Triona Adams was a high price hobnobbing theatrical agent, booking clients into the National and attending premieres and power lunches, but after a weekend retreat at a c…

(A Scotsman-length review as this was an Edinburgh preview)An adult musical wherein a character in the dumps learns a lesson with puppets. Yeah, Avenue Q did it first and does it more honestly and better, but …

The new musical adaptation of the hit film about three scorned wives is a true crowd-pleaser, but would benefit from a stronger book and score.

The First Wives Club kicks off with more fits and starts than a dithering bridezilla in a dress shop. But that first half, when we meet the wives and their woes, is just a setup for the second, when they actually go into action. That's when First Wives and its new songs by the incomparable Motown team Holland/Dozier/Holland step up with a pizazz that befits a (potentially) Broadway-bound show.

If you can overlook the often generic R&B elevator music of Motown writing legends Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland, the cut-and-pasted and cursorily reimagined book by Rupert Holmes, and the fac…

It pulsates. It seduces. It is rock solid, pure entertainment.

Unless you are missing a chromosome or two, you should find Burn the Floor an invigorating and exhilarating entertainment. It is certainly the sexiest show on Broadway.

Guest stars Karina Smirnoff and Maksim Chmerkovskiy provide most of the heat in this surprisingly tepid dance show.

While ballroom blitz Burn the Floor has been touring internationally for 10 years, its arrival on Broadway clearly aims to cash in on the resurgent popularity of dance on television reality shows. But if you're going to invade the turf of Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins and Michael Bennett, you need to bring something beyond adrenaline and aggressive sizzle. Something like grace, style or wit. While there's only about 15 ounces of collective body fat onstage, there's also about 15 ounces of imagination.

Despite the overt sexiness, there's something bland about the evening, a generic eroticism that needs a dose of quirkiness during a surprisingly monotonous tour through the history of ballroom dancing.

When the dance cannot turn a full evening into more than a series of strenuous effects, director-choreographer Jason Gilkison switches the lights from green to purple. When all else fails, we get the fog machin…

With its zero percent body fat and four-alarm sizzle, "Burn the Floor" is the stage equivalent of a fast, frisky beach read. With legs. Twenty pulsating pairs.

Burn the Floor consists of a breathless, plotless succession of ballroom routines. That's it, and it's either a lot or not very much, depending on your love for this type of dancing.

The good news about this ballroom dancing extravaganza is that it is every bit as flashy and tacky as you would expect. Do I need to add that this is also the bad news?

Today more than a million visitors a year come to what is perhaps the most visited assassination site in the world and to the small room across the street where the spirit of Abraham Lincoln began its return fl…

Casting news about Little House on the Prairie, the Musical at the Paper Mill Playhouse and the New Group's Starry Messenger.

The subject is lines and lyrics that use the names of our 50 states. I've managed to find one for each question without ever repeating a musical.

Go up and take the tour sometime -- August 16.

New works target real life in annual Steppenwolf showcase

Laura Eason's smart and riveting "Sex with Strangers," the must-see show at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company's First Look Repertory of New Work and, I'll bet, the next red hot Chicago play, is the best drama I'v…

Last weekend, Kevin Stites and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra did right by the evergreen Frank Loesser score for a pleasant night out, in the face of grievous miscasting and a total absence of drama.

"Guys and Dolls," a Broadway musical set in Times Square, filled with Hell's Kitchen riff-raff and their would-be reformers and subtitled "A Musical Fable of Broadway, seemed right at home at the Hollywood Bowl…

For young dancers Oskar Rodriguez and Angelo Rivera, landing in an all-star ensemble's revival of an iconic musical has given them further inspiration to pursue their dreams.

Don't hate Broadway vet Richard Jay-Alexander for thinking Jessica Biel has the chops to pull off Guys and Dolls in concert. After all, he considers Barbra, Bette and Bernadette close personal and professional friends.

Despite some really slick production values and a generally tight and perky staging by Francesca Zambello, this is still just another one of those six-finales-in-search-of-a-plot shows.

Old Globe has lined up an all-star team for a musical based on 'First Wives Club,' including pop giants Holland/Dozier/Holland

This oversexed and underwhelming - if surface-level-enjoyable - show that just opened at the Longacre has been so glamoured and glitzed à la Dancing with the Stars that it even incorporates two of that ABC megahit's most sinewy fixtures: its unquestionably gifted and blindingly sculpted (and incidentally engaged) champion celebrity partners, Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff.

This dazzling Latin and ballroom dance revue is brilliantly performed by a cast of international dancesport champions.

Susan Lucci, Samantha Harris, Carrie Ann Inaba, Tony Roberts, Ricky Paull Goldin, David Fumero, Melissa Gallo, Chrishell Stause, and Saundra Santiago celebrate the Broadway opening of Burn the Floor.

The show continues Australian choreographer Jason Gilkison's family tradition of ballroom dance, sexing it up for Broadway.

More than 80 singers and dancers turned out in Fair Lawn last month to audition for the upcoming Old Library Theater production of "Rent," the gritty smash musical that centers on seven impoverished artists and…

It's not just an Old-Fashioned, please, but Cole Porter would be happy. Specialty cocktails inspired by plays and musicals are enlivening lobbies of Broadway's not-for-profit theatres.

This month's column offers a change of pace from the usual roundup of new publications, as we share some of our staff's all-time favorite books about this business we call show.

'Torchbearers' reunites longtime WTF actors in a 1920's farce about a theater company trying to put on a show

A vintage musical comes to life in the fond spoof.

Three playwrights whose dramas will be seen at this year's Fringe Festival

A selection of selections selectively selected from The Clyde Fitch Report blogroll, with commentary.

Members of the creative team behind the twice-extended Thank You For Being a Friend talk about parody laws and Estelle Getty's hemorrhoids.

Only the most recent Hamlet on Broadway, that of Ralph Fiennes, won a Tony for the actor essaying the title character.

How are the arts debased or devalued by studies noticably skewed toward a particular viewpoint?

The actor has long been drawn to the challenging play and its bizarre developments. He is performing it at La Jolla Playhouse.

You don't have to understand the language a play is performed in to be moved by the visual and emotional spectacle of theatre

William Shakespeare is the American summer phenom. You can't get away from the guy.

In the long-archived "The Day on Which a Man Dies," Tennessee Williams explores the final moments in the life of an artist he identified with.

Thirty-five years ago this summer, Bob Funking and Bill Stutler, two former ad men, brought dinner theater to an office park in Elmsford.

The studio and producer Marc Platt are in active development on a remake of "Jesus Christ Superstar."