Saturday, October 20, 2012
SMILE, THOUGH YOUR HEART IS BREAKING Andrea Marcovicci, who reinvented the torch song for a new generation, has looked our depression/recession straight in the face and decided that what she…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:09AMThursday, October 18, 2012
THE JOURNEY HOMEWARD The title character in Simon Stephens’s freshly observed new play, Harper Regan, is at a crossroads in her life, in the midst of what we used to call a midlife crisis.…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:14PMWOE AND BEHOLD When John Kelly descends into the regions of darkness, he does so with a soaring intensity that is intoxicating and never depressing. In his new cabaret act at Joe’s Pub, Ke…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:49PMTuesday, October 16, 2012
“Satire,” as George S. Kaufman once famously said, “is what closes Saturday night.” Though written in jest, it has served as an admonition for playwrights in pursuit of satire. In …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:48PMSunday, July 1, 2012
WHO’LL SAVE THE PLOW HORSE? War Horse is almost critic-proof. It has been garnering all sorts of Best Play awards, but, in truth, there are all sorts of new, unrecognized categories fo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:01AMFriday, June 29, 2012
THE SIZZLE’S A FIZZLE It is an uncontestable fact that every play August Wilson wrote justifies being looked at again and again. It has been fascinating to see how the moral, political…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:36PMSunday, May 20, 2012
FOLLIES IN HOLLYWOOD Follies has always been a fabulous musical. It may not be Stephen Sondheim‘s greatest musical, but it is the Stephen Sondheim musical that his admirers most desper…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:11AMSunday, May 13, 2012
THE PROBLEM WITH BEING TOO WELL-MANNERED David Auburn‘s The Columnist gets the good part over with in the first scene and then proceeds to become exactly the sort of play we might have…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:36AMWednesday, May 9, 2012
Stage and Cinema sent Harvey Perr back to the east coast to catch up on this very busy time of the season in New York City theater, when new shows open one right after the other and Tony fev…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:50PMFriday, April 27, 2012
THEATER OF THE ADVENTUROUS I hadn’t realized how deeply entrenched in my unconsciousness the Peter Pan legend was; that is, until I found myself, in the last minutes of the rousing and mir…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:16PMTuesday, April 24, 2012
BEYOND REALISM The living room and foyer of the modest house on 9th Street in the South Philadelphia of 1986, created by David Meyer, is as dank and dreary as social realism will allow. An…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:07PMSaturday, April 21, 2012
YOU’RE GONNA STAND UP… Sometimes in the theater, all you need are four chairs and four actors and a director who knows how to move them around so that everything they do is as natura…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:36PMBLOODY MASSACRE, DULL SONG As they march through (or are flung through) the doors of an abandoned slaughterhouse, their bodies bloodied, one wonders what battle zone of what war they have co…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:52AMWednesday, April 18, 2012
POLITICS AS USUAL Given the nastiness of the recent Republican primary debates and a sense of even worse nastiness to come with the next election, it is no surprise that thoughts of reviving…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:57AMTuesday, April 10, 2012
A TRIUMPHANT TRAINWRECK If you’ve never applauded a trainwreck, be prepared to do so when you see Peter Quilter’s End of the Rainbow. I am not talking about the gossip-driven, hardly rev…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:29PMSunday, April 1, 2012
WHICH AMERICAN IDIOT ARE YOU? If you know and love Green Day’s studio concept album on which it is based, American Idiot is the show for you. If, like me, you are a stranger to the or…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:50AMThursday, March 29, 2012
MEMORIES OF SEAGULLS PAST If you have never seen The Seagull – though I can’t imagine a seasoned theatergoer who hasn’t, can you? – you just might possibly get an inklin…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:11PMFriday, March 23, 2012
THE GODOT WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR Samuel Beckett is a great comic playwright. You don’t believe me? Then run, don’t walk, to the Mark Taper Forum and see the blissfully funny an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:57PMFriday, March 9, 2012
TWO MORE ONE-PERSON PLAYS AT THE SKYLIGHT Burke Byrnes’s The Yellow House (Fridays) and Harry Hart-Browne’s Special Delivery (Saturdays) both possess the virtues and weaknesses…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:45AMSaturday, January 21, 2012
WILL THE REAL MOLLY IVINS PLEASE STAND UP? Molly Ivins was a ballsy Texas-based reporter who became a legend in her own time by calling a spade a spade (or, more succinctly, calling George W…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:21PMSunday, December 18, 2011
SING A SONG OF AFRICA Fela! is a scorcher. On these chilly nights in December and January, everyone (with a vested interest in the continuing power of musical theater) should retreat to the …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:34PMSunday, December 4, 2011
TELL US A STORY, AUNTIE CHARLAYNE If I were a child, I would want Auntie Charlayne to tuck me in and tell me a story. Why? Because Auntie Charlayne – that’s Charlayne Woodard – …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:12AMTWISTED LITTLE PASSIONS IN THE SUBURBS Now that A Noise Within – the Southern California repertory theater company dedicated to the classics – has gotten a snazzy new suburban theater …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:48AMSaturday, November 19, 2011
THE BLIND LEADING THE HALF BLIND “It’s The Devils meets Marat/Sade.” someone said to me. “Yes,” I responded. “As performed by the Marx Brothers!” We…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:20PMFriday, November 18, 2011
SHORT TAKES ON CURRENT LOS ANGELES THEATER AS IT WAS: As Is, written by William M. Hoffman in 1984, when so many of our contemporaries were dying of the AIDS epidemic, still maintains its po…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:37PMSaturday, November 12, 2011
THEATER IN NEW YORK: THE ACTING’S THE THING (BROADWAY) You may go to see Relatively Speaking in the hope of seeing three bright comedies by some of our funniest comic writers – E…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:32PMSaturday, November 5, 2011
AUTUMN THEATER IN NEW YORK: OFF BROADWAY, THE ACTING’S THE THING Acting is the main artery through which most of New York Theater travels. When a new season is announced, one looks f…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:55PMThursday, November 3, 2011
OCCASIONALLY, WHEN WE’RE LUCKY, IT FLIES In Come Fly Away, there are at least four dances – “I’ve Got A Crush On You,” “Body and Soul,” “I Like To Lead When I Dance,” a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:49PMTHE TROUBLE WITH BHUTAN I am not advocating that bad directors should face a firing squad in the town square in full view of the entire community. But I have seen three plays now that were d…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:56PMWednesday, November 2, 2011
WHAT’S COOKING IN HER KITCHEN? In the bracingly intelligent and potentially powerful Hermetically Sealed, playwright Kathryn Graf has set out to explore the ways in which families dece…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:46AMTENNESSEE W’S MASTER CLASS FOR ACTORS The New American Theatre production of Five Beauties (or, as it turned out to be at the performance I attended, Four Beauties) is not like going t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:28AM 
