Monday, June 10, 2019
Well, two of us did okay: Liz and Sandra each had 17 correct predictions. I had decided to be iconoclastic, which was a bad idea: 11 correct predictions.
THE WINNERS
Liz
Sandra
…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:03AMSunday, May 26, 2019
I have seen enough mediocre-to-bad high-concept productions of Shakespeare's plays to shudder at the very idea of "high-concept." Then along comes Mac Beth, the amazing Red Bull Production …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:06PMI suspect that there is a good play inside Jesse Eisenberg's Happy Talk, currently at The New Group at the Signature Center. The ideas and the situation are intriguing, and there is humor …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:04AMFriday, May 24, 2019
Best MusicalAin’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations
Beetlejuice
Hadestown
The PromTootsie
Liz Wollman: Hadestown. Seriously, can we please celebrate a creative team …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:24PMWednesday, May 15, 2019
Trisha Lee works as a cleaner in a hospital in Sparkton, Texas. She is a church-going Christian. She adored her late husband. The focus of her life is her 14-year-old daughter Jolene. Or is …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:12PMSaturday, May 11, 2019
One of the themes of the gorgeous and heart-breaking Caroline, or Change, the story of an African-American maid working for a Jewish family in the 1960s South, is that "change come fast, ch…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:54PMMonday, April 29, 2019
What an odd show is Lady in the Dark. Consisting largely of three dream sequences, it lacks forward propulsion and is frequently overdone and/or pointless and/or flabby, particularly in the …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:42PMMonday, April 22, 2019
As you probably already know, in the old days theatre critics wrote their reviews right after seeing the performances. In fact, as the shows ended, the critics ran up the aisles to maximize …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:25PMMy sister once said that, while the worst men are incredibly sleazy, the worst women are incredibly stupid. In the world premiere of The Pain of My Belligerence at Playwrights Horizons, wri…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:49PMWednesday, April 3, 2019
Marc Blitzstein's 1937 "play in music," The Cradle Will Rock, uses theatre as a political soapbox. Its scathing depictions of the hypocrisies of capitalism, religion, and other societal icon…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:00PMSunday, March 31, 2019
John Webster wrote The White Devil in the early 1600s, and 400 years later it remains relevant and great fun. Red Bull director Louisa Proske underlines its timeliness with a modern-dress p…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:30PMWednesday, March 20, 2019
MasterVoices (formerly known as the Collegiate Chorale) has a long history of presenting wonderful evenings of song and theatre, and Night Songs and Love Waltzes fit right in. (There's also …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:09PMWednesday, March 13, 2019
First, behold the title: If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka, sparkling with energy. Next, the structure: playwright Tori Sampson's dynamic, emotional play riffs on folklore, Afric…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:58PMMonday, March 11, 2019
I've had a challenging and satisfying few hours chewing on the ideas and questions posed by Gus Schulenburg's new play Operating Systems, which I saw this afternoon. The description of the…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:39AMFriday, March 1, 2019
What a difference a director makes.
When By the Way, Meet Vera Stark was done at the Second Stage, directed by Jo Bonney, it was hysterically funny, yet hard-hitting and even heart-breakin…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:41PMWednesday, February 27, 2019
It's easy to discuss the lack of gender parity in theatre, but what can be done about it? The League of Professional Theatre Women exists to answer that question and to make things happen, …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:37PMWednesday, February 20, 2019
The invaluable Mint Theater Company has found another underappreciated playwright from early in the last century. Elizabeth Baker grew up in an extremely religious household and didn't see h…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:33PMThursday, January 3, 2019
I am frequently blown away by the depth and quality of the New York acting community. Brilliant performances are everywhere.(I've linked to my reviews for shows I did indeed review.)THE ENSE…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:06PMTuesday, January 1, 2019
In 2018, I saw 74 shows. Only nine of them were on Broadway; those prices, even when discounted, keep scaring me away. However, I've lost little by skipping Broadway shows (as much as I woul…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:12PMThursday, December 13, 2018
At the beginning of Erin Mallon's The Net Will Appear, 75-year-old Bernard climbs out of his second-story window to use the roof of the first floor as a deck. He sets up his camping chair an…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:42AMWednesday, December 12, 2018
"What, another musical based on a late 20th-century movie?" you may ask. Well, yeah. But here's the thing: it's really good.Zurin Villanueva, Dove Cameron Photo: Monique CarboniWriter/l…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:12AMMonday, December 10, 2018
I expected to like Noura, Heather Raffo's play at Playwrights Horizon. I knew it was about a Christian Iraqi family living in the US, which I found intriguing, and that it delves into assimi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:48PMMonday, December 3, 2018
Well-deserved raves for Martin Moran's heart-breaking solo piece, The Tricky Part, can be found at the Times, Theater Mania, and the Fordham Observer. I'm more interested in the why of …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:12PMThursday, November 15, 2018
My latest essay is up at Art Times: I just voted, and I’m a nervous wreck. The sad truth is that no matter who wins, it’s not going to be pretty. We seem to have lost the ability as…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:42PMMonday, November 5, 2018
I see political correctness as largely a good thing. For me, it connotes trying to honor other people and their needs; calling people by their chosen names; respecting that people with diffe…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:48PMThe superb Druid production of Waiting for Godot, which is part of the Lincoln Center White Light festival, is damn close to perfect. Garry Hynes's meticulous direction exquisitely bala…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:42PMEvery couple of years, the theatre company Premieres commissions three sung monologues. The writers are given no limitations in terms of content or theme. The latest three monologues, Inner …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:42PMSaturday, November 3, 2018
If you have any interest in circuses; if you love the daring young people on the flying trapeze; if you are entertained by amazing juggling or impressed by feats of strength or fascinated by…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:06PMFriday, October 19, 2018
A woman becomes aware of her surroundings. She is standing on a table and holding a gun. Behind her is a man who looks like he has been tortured, or maybe hit by a car, his injured arm secur…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:32PMThursday, October 18, 2018
You know that old writing rule, "Show, don't tell"? It makes a lot of sense, particularly in theatre, where we watch characters live their lives right in front of us. Of course, there's also…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:06PMMonday, October 8, 2018
It's difficult this week to agree with the title The World Only Spins Forward. But in the story of Angels in America, the world did spin forward, as shown by this fascinating, info…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:12AM 
