As theatrical experience, the National's production of Mother Courage and Her Children is often brazenly, outrageously adventurous. Ultimately, though, its message becomes muddied in the blood and grime which it so forcefully and noisily depicts.

Kevin Spacey adds star power to this classic courtroom drama.

It isn't at all unexpected that the still vital and vigorous Arthur Laurents would eventually turn his attention in his dotage to a play about love, loss, and how one copes with them.

This A-cast revival of the 1927 Ferber/Kaufman hit is sure to thrill anyone yearning to re-experience a bygone era.

Is Never Land Utopia, the place where dreams are born (as Peter Pan once sang)? Or is it a euphemism for miserable reality—what Hamlet called this sterile promontory? Evidence for both is vividly provided in Phyllis Nagy's 1998 fantasia on cultural and psychic displacement, now enjoying its U.S. premiere under her direction. The dense, textured script is no cakewalk for either producer Rogue Machine or the audience, but many will find it worth visiting.

Kiss Me Kate goes Goth in the Katselas Theater Company's world premiere production of Scott Martin's bloodless tuner Children of the Night. The intriguing tale of Dracula author Bram Stoker's life behind the scenes in the London theater and his frustrating relationship with actor Henry Irving provide sufficient drama, but Martin's musical style and book are smothered in the dust of '70s Brit tuners. One-note characters and cliched dialogue leave the actors with few choices to make, though refreshing perfs from fine singer Teri Bibb and giddy Gibby Brand suggest some of the material has potential.

Irish scribes from Brian Friel to Martin McDonagh have been writing variations on J.M. Synge's 1907 Playboy of the Western World for decades, but the venerable comedy rarely gets a Gotham staging. In almost any form, it's a show worth seeing, and the Pearl Theater's deliberately unshowy production hits several of the play's high notes. Helmer and new Pearl a.d. J.R. Sullivan sometimes confuses fidelity with blandness, and his leads aren't yet quite sure of themselves, but several good supporting perfs find the populous play's wonderfully mean-spirited heart.

A welcome experiment in sensation that provides powerful jolts of light and noise.

The authors of this biography of Mozart's librettist attempt to combine opera with musical theatre and get a mix of sour and sweet notes.

Anyone ever tortured by a Charles Dickens novel will find lots and lots to laugh at in the parody Penny Penniworth.

David Mamet's miscommunicating student and professor still get people stirred up about their Rashomon-like power play.

Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles bring out a number of nuances in David Mamet's provocative two-hander.

There are key phrases in David Mamet's Oleanna that in their banal simplicity reveal as much about the two adversarial characters and their corrosive dilemma as all their heated verbiage combined. For frustrated student Carol, it's "I don't understand." For her heedless professor John, it's "I can't talk right now." And both of them favor multiple variations on "Do you see?" Miscommunication more than gender politics is the central issue in this incendiary 1992 two-hander, and that gulf is exposed with bristling conviction by Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles. But Doug Hughes' meticulously calibrated production can't correct the imbalance of a manipulative play that only feigns impartiality.

Douglas Hughes reconsiders David Mamet's explosive two-hander about sexual harassment, and with powerhouse performances from Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman, it's more than just a one-sided battle.

David Mamet wrote Oleanna in 1992, when the country was in the throes of the Clarence Thomas–Anita Hill controversy, which he transposed into academia. An Off-Broadway hit back then, the play now makes its Broadway debut in a revival starring Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman that has lost none of its power to provoke.

The linguistic pyrotechnics of playwright David Mamet are on full display in the bruising Broadway revival of Oleanna, which opened Sunday at the Golden Theatre. It's Mamet's incendiary take on the consequences of political correctness—specifically involving sexual harassment—and how language helps to facilitate the battle.

As the controversy now surrounding David Letterman reminds us, the debate over what constitutes an abuse of power between a male authority figure and a female subordinate isn't going away. And the gripping new production of Oleanna that opened Sunday at the Golden Theatre reinforces how tricky and multilayered that issue can be.

During every scene change, vertical shades on John's office windows are lowered dramatically, as if to underscore a question asked by John and Carol 20 times in 75 minutes: "Do you see?" The two never actually do, and that divide between the sexes is worth exploring. But Broadway's Oleanna, which wants to provoke, has effectively been reduced to an inside joke—the blinds leading the blind.

Watching this play today is like watching something made during the Red Scare of the '50s. Oleanna speaks volumes not only about an era dominated by the shared paranoia of conservatives and lefty activists, but also about its creator's id. And what surged from Mamet's brain is the closest Broadway now has to a slasher movie.

The revival of David Mamet's play, which pits the excellent Bill Pullman against the luminous Julia Stiles, often seemed slow to the point of stasis.

This year's New York Musical Theater Festival brings a surprising number of highly polished productions giving it their all in mostly small, slightly out-of-the-way theaters.

Cast recordings from the show Glee accounted for 10 spots on the iTunes top 200 and four on the Billboard Hot 100.

Very soon after the lights came up on the new Hamlet at the Broadhurst, I thought I was going to like it quite a bit.

Actor to bare H'w'd secrets in film

The season's October boomlet, from Hamlet to Princess Leia.

A heroic "Hamlet" and musings on mortality.

This ingenious multimedia import from Britain, now receiving its U.S. premiere at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, pays homage to the movie by translating the romantic fable into a playfully …

Sean McNall gives a thoroughly convincing performance in the Pearl Theater Company's uneven revival of J.M. Synge's well-known comedy.

No matter which "goods" you are apt to side with, The Contrast will titillate you.

"American Idiot" translates Green Day's generational angst into a moody theatrical fantasia. If it doesn't spin an entirely satisfying yarn, its roar is still irresistible, even when the object of protest remai…

If Mercurio can unite the best elements of Faust and With Glee with his own unique moralistic outlook and musical voice, Academy could end up as both a good show and a valuable learning experience.

There's only so much that even the most gifted artists could bring to life in a show that revolves around a question so shallow and inherently undramatic.

The best thing about "Oleanna" is that it forces us to think about some very heavy subjects. But this frustratingly flawed play is a disappointment because Mamet the "A" playwright is delivering "C" work.

There's such a thing as being too nice. Which is the major problem with the revival of "Oleanna" that opened Sunday night at the John Golden Theatre.

Who's the victim? Who's the aggressor? Who cares? All three questions, in roughly equal proportions, flood Doug Hughes's new revival of Oleanna at the John Golden, making this Broadway bow of David Mamet's most controversial and viscerally exciting play into a pedestrian mess.

Doug Hughes' excellent Broadway revival starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles thrives on speed, intensity, and psychological subtlety. Though the play is still likely to divide audience members and make many f…

Selections from the 140-plus blogs of The Clyde Fitch Report blogroll, with commentary.

"Something a straight man might assume...might seem ridiculous to a gay man or vice versa," says the out gay actor Steve Hayes of his comedy partner, straight Tom Cayler.

In Gorilla Rep's first film, it's the explosive combination of physical proximity to truly intense acting that sets this "Macbeth" apart.

Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson on their show, Modern Family.

Meet the new Eugene Jerome, Neil Simon's alter ego in the Brighton Beach Memoirs revival. His name is Noah Robbins, he's 19, and he just moved to New York.

How do you turn a twangy Texas blonde into a stylish, Midwestern media superstar?
It's all about the hair.

The Finian's Rainbow star discusses her character, working with Cheyenne Jackson, and her new CD.

The economy's slow, but Actors' Gang says show will go on

The creators of 'The Laramie Project' revisit the Wyoming city to assess lasting impact of the gay student's killing. Their updates are being performed Oct. 12 by 150 groups.