Tuesday, April 5, 2016
From Art Times:Once upon a time, boys played the women’s roles in Shakespeare’s plays. Once upon a different time, Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor performed in blackface to great acclaim, and…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:58PMPerhaps the single most salient fact about theater is that it is ephemeral, evanescent. Even if you get to see a production 10 times, it eventually closes, and it's gone. Poof. But in some i…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:48PMMonday, March 28, 2016
The Pearl Theater's production of Stupid Fucking Bird, Aaron Posner's 21st-century riff/recreation of The Seagull, is well-directed, well-acted, well-designed, and a great deal of fun. …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:24PMSunday, March 27, 2016
Here's what I liked about Dry Power, Sarah Burgess's predictable, unimaginative, and lame incitement of high finance, currently playing at the Public Theater: the women in the crew wore blac…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:15PMSaturday, February 27, 2016
Playwright Hazel Ellis seems to have had a low opinion of women, with an even lower opinion of powerless women stuck together in lives harshly circumscribed by need. Premiering in Ireland in…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:44PMMonday, February 22, 2016
If you (1) love Stephen Sondheim; (2) adore A Little Night Music; (3) treasure gorgeous singing; and/or (4) value a bargain, get thee to Theatre 2020 in Brooklyn Heights. Running through Mar…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:22AMWednesday, February 17, 2016
Sam Shepard's Buried Child presents the American nightmare. Family is poisonous; religion is useless; ambition is pointless; nothing has been planted in over 30 years. A bizarre, rotted Norm…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:08PMSunday, February 14, 2016
The Encores! presentation of Cabin in the Sky is over, so I'm going to limit this post to three comments:1. I am so glad that musicals have evolved over the years. Cabin in the Sky, whi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:38PMMonday, February 8, 2016
Chris (an unusually subdued James Kautz) wants Amber (the superb Vanessa Vache) to take him back. They've been together on and off since they were teens, and Chris admits that he's messed up…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:22PMWednesday, February 3, 2016
Dr. Seuss, renowned children's author, managed to tuck away some pretty radical thoughts in his accessible, funny, tightly rhymed, and sweetly illustrated books. Seussical, the musical based…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:52PMMonday, January 25, 2016
My latest Art Times essay is up: Every now and then, a controversy breaks out about leaving shows during intermission. Is it fair, acceptable, reasonable, and/or kosher? (rea…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:46PMThursday, January 21, 2016
A short time into the future, Queen Elizabeth has died, and Charles is king. Lacking his mother's presence, popularity, and willingness to play the game, he initiates a national crisis by re…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:24PMTuesday, January 12, 2016
It's fitting that Marilyn Maye ended her recent show at the Metropolitan Room with "The Secret of Life" followed by "Here's to Life," since she clearly lives by both songs. At 87, she's dyna…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:44PMMonday, December 28, 2015
Although Ben Brantley's opinion can change the fate of a show, and yours and mine can't, in a deeper sense his is no more valuable than ours. Some of us may bring more experience to the tabl…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:28PMSunday, December 27, 2015
I share Liz Wollman's wonder at the sheer volume of art in this beautiful city of ours. In 2015, I saw 80 shows and there are easily 80 more I wish I had seen. But even with "only" 80 s…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:04PMTuesday, December 22, 2015
In the introduction to Ethan Mordden's On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide, Mordden writes, "My intention is to bring the reader closer to Sondheim's oeuvre, to explore his unique ap…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:58PMMonday, December 14, 2015
My latest article is up at Art Times: An odd thing happens to some people when faced with the existence of musicals. They start saying very strange things:“I don’t like musicals, except …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:43AMSunday, November 29, 2015
Steven (Matt McGrath) and Stephen (Malcolm Gets) have been together 16 years. They have an amazing relationship and a fabulous son named Zack. But there are cracks in the plaster. The relati…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:21AMFriday, November 13, 2015
Sometimes seeing a mediocre production of a play can be surprisingly elucidating. For example, the Onomatopoeia Theatre Company's version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:45PMFriday, November 6, 2015
Playwright Jaclyn Backhaus is clearly fascinated with the past, factual and fictional, and how it reflects on the present. In You On The Moors Now, she examines romantic tropes as handed dow…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:58PMMonday, November 2, 2015
The T. Schreiber Studio and Theatre is one of the undersung jewels of New York City theatre. Year after year, T. Schreiber presents solid productions, often featuring long-time dir…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:16AMWednesday, October 28, 2015
Songbird, the new musical by Michael Kimmel (book) and Lauren Pritchard (music and lyrics), directed by JV Mercanti, brings The Seagull to Nashville in the 21st century. The b…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:15PMTuesday, October 27, 2015
William Finn, lyricist-composer of Falsettos, Elegies, and Little Miss Sunshine, writes at the corner of idiosyncratic and heartfelt. His topics range far and wide: e.g., a baseball game, tr…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:39PMMonday, October 26, 2015
Songbird, the new musical by Michael Kimmel (book) and Lauren Pritchard (music and lyrics), directed by JV Mercanti, brings The Seagull to Nashville in the 21st century. The book is eff…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:15PMFor its 38th season, the Big Apple Circus presents an frequently charming, often thrilling new show called The Grand Tour. Using large travel posters and appropriate scenery and costume…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:15PMThursday, October 22, 2015
Have you noticed that whenever someone announces a "re-imagining" of a musical, the show gets smaller? Why does no show ever get bigger? Why does no one add more instruments? Why doesn't Dam…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:56PMWednesday, October 21, 2015
On one hand, Mac Rogers' Honeycomb Trilogy is a highly entertaining sci-fi epic, covering over 20 years and an extraterrestrial invasion or two. It has everything you could ask for…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:09AMThursday, October 15, 2015
We don't usually publish press releases at Show Showdown, but I want to make sure everyone is aware that The Honeycomb Trilogy is back. I recommend it very highly! (And if my plug is not eno…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:24PMWednesday, October 14, 2015
It's difficult to review Michael Riedel's Razzle Dazzle because it's difficult to figure out exactly what he's trying to accomplish. In the author's note, he writes that the b…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:09PMConstance Shulman, Arden Myrin Photo: Joan MarcusAs Elizabeth Wollman points out below, Barbecue is a challenging show to review. Almost anything one could write about it would be …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:09PMTuesday, October 13, 2015
Part of the yearly Broadway Close Up series, Bound for Broadway presents songs from new musicals that may or may not actually be "bound for Broadway" (only time will tell). Past shows t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:43PM 
