Friday, October 2, 2020
By ALAN SMASON With the current COVID-19 pandemic creating new and interesting virtual meeting places, university campuses have been marked by responsiveness and ingenuity. Last spring’s v…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:46AMTuesday, September 22, 2020
The Tony Awards Administration Committee met on August 27, 2020 to confirm the eligibility status of three Broadway productions for the 2020 Tony Awards®. This was the final time the Tony A…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 03:10AMFriday, July 10, 2020
By ALAN SMASON As the seconds ticked by to display a 2:00 a.m. CDT time on the computer, it was easy for me to imagine the sounds of a million click booms on TV remotes across the nation. Th…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 08:07AMThursday, June 18, 2020
The 65th annual Drama Desk Awards, which had been postponed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and then rescheduled for Sunday, May 31, only to be postponed again due to the emerging protests and…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 12:34AMWednesday, June 17, 2020
By HARRY DUKE, originally published in NORTH BAY BOHEMIAN What is the point of reviewing theatre? If you had asked me that question 90 days ago, my answer would be to provide potential audie…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 03:58AMSaturday, March 14, 2020
By EDWARD RUBIN Surprise of all surprises, the 1969 movie “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” thanks to The New Group and Pershing Square Signature Center, is back in the news again…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:46AMSaturday, March 7, 2020
By EDWARD RUBIN In or out of drag, whether on stage or page, the 65-year-old actor playwright Charles Busch, with some 40 years of show business under his belt, is a force to be reckoned wit…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 06:54PMFriday, February 21, 2020
By JACK LYONS, Special from Desert Local News.com (PALM SPRINGS, CA.) – Coyote StageWorks, of Palm Springs, presents playwright Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 as the debut produc…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 05:58PMSaturday, February 1, 2020
By EDWARD RUBIN My Name Is Lucy Barton written by Elizabeth Stout and published to a chorus of Hosannas in 2016, is now a one-woman, two-character play – running through Saturday, February…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 06:07PMTuesday, January 28, 2020
By EDWARD RUBIN I cannot remember any play that unnerved me to such a degree as the Vineyard Theatre’s production of Tina Satter’s brilliantly conceived Is This A Room. Not only did this…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:15PMMonday, January 20, 2020
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) With its current production of Something Rotten!, Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carré has set the bar so incredibly high that even …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 06:16PMWednesday, January 15, 2020
By EDWARD RUBIN First things first. Before I delve into the Irish Repertory Theater’s marvelous production of London Assurance by Dublin-born playwright Dion Boucicault (1820-1890) – ext…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:50AMTuesday, November 26, 2019
By BILL HIRSCHMAN For even those who only knew Herbert Simpson in passing, likely what they remember was his voice – usually deep and sonorous, a bit scratchy, but brimming with passion. T…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:31AMThursday, November 7, 2019
By EDWARD RUBIN Will Arbery’s latest play, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, having been extended two times by popular demand, is now running Off-Broadway through Sunday, November 17, 2019 at …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:05AMThursday, October 31, 2019
By ANNE SIEGEL It has been a long wait, but the people of southeast Wisconsin finally get to be in the room where it happens. Hamilton has arrived. And what a reception it’s getting. The m…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 04:00PMFriday, October 11, 2019
By EDWARD RUBIN I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 07:32AMSaturday, October 5, 2019
By ROY BERKO Suzan-Lori Parks, Lynn Nottage and Tonya Barfield are noted as emerging African-American playwrights. Another member of that sorority is the award-winning Dominique Morisseau, t…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:24AMSaturday, September 14, 2019
By ROY BERKO In its off-Broadway production, Shakespeare R&J (which is now on stage at convergence continuum) ran for a year, making it the longest running version of “Romeo and Juliet…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 10:28AMSunday, September 1, 2019
By JACK LYONS, Desert Local News “Silly is as silly does,” could easily be the subtitle following the name of the current comedy/farce romp The Underpants, now on stage at the Old Globe�…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 08:39AMBy JACK LYONS, Desert Local News There have been many love stories written about the redemptive power of love in all its art forms: poems, songs, odes, sonnets, essays, novels, movies, and …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 07:06AMSaturday, August 24, 2019
By ROY BERKO Kenneth Lonergan is noted for writing about decent people who are unexpectedly challenged by issues of ethics. In his Lobby Hero, now on stage at Blank Canvas, the 2016 Oscar wi…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:37PMSunday, August 18, 2019
By EDWARD RUBIN There are probably greater painters than Noël. Greater novelists than Noël, greater librettists, greater composers of music, greater singers, greater dancers, greater comed…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:19AMSaturday, August 10, 2019
By EDWARD RUBIN While New York City recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising with much hoopla and an enormous traffic-stopping Gay Pride parade that went on well in…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 10:00AMTuesday, May 14, 2019
By HERBERT W. SIMPSON It seems that Geva Theater Center’s long devotion to creating a worthy theater piece devoted to the history of Son House has reached a temporarily completed form in t…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 02:01AMMonday, April 29, 2019
By HERBERT W. SIMPSON Virtually all of our leading contemporary repertory theaters now include non-traditional experimental techniques in staging not only original new work but also – even…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 02:49PMSunday, February 24, 2019
By ANNE SIEGEL MILWAUKEE, WI. – A small but energetic theater company, Off the Wall Theatre, has produced a memorable production of one of Tennessee Williams’ later works, Small Craft Wa…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 07:49PMMonday, December 10, 2018
By ROY BERKO Jeanine Tesori (music) and David Lindsay-Abaire (books and lyrics) developed the creative Shrek: The Musical from DreamWorks Animation’s film and William Steig’s book of the…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 10:45AMSaturday, November 17, 2018
By ALAN SMASON SAN FRANCISCO — Anyone who has ever seen a Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney film knows that the ills of the world can be transformed by putting on a show, raising needed reven…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 07:18AMTuesday, October 30, 2018
By HERBERT SIMPSON Despite already having knocked people out in splendidly acted versions, this important and enormously appealing play seems to be moving to “National Treasure” status i…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:25AMMonday, October 1, 2018
By ROY BERKO Susan Hill, author of the book “The Woman in Black,” the source of the play of the same name now being staged at the Cleveland Play House (CPH), relates: “The Suffolk coas…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 03:43PMBy ROY BERKO God, or a facsimile thereof, in the form of Mike Polk Jr., who in his other life is a local comedian and Fox 8 personality, is appearing on the Beck Center for the Arts stage, i…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:48AM 
