A great farce always feels a little like watching someone carry an impossibly tall wedding cake across a crowded room. Every wobble makes you gasp. Every...
For the first several minutes of Sleuth, I wasn’t entirely sure what kind of game playwright Anthony Shaffer (“Death on the Nile“) wanted me to play....
Some overtures begin a musical. Others seem to unlock an entire lifetime of theatrical memories. Both are true as the first notes of Jule Styne’s unmistakable...
A musical flourish accompanies the parting of the red curtains, and a man stands, just to the right of the spotlight. He seems caught off guard,...
The first image grabs hold, even before Shakespeare has begun his relentless march toward tragedy. A body slowly emerges from beneath the stage, crawling upward as...
There are caricatures, and then there is what Ken Fallin does. With a few decisive lines, Fallin doesn’t just render a likeness—he captures the emotional architecture...
Ben Platt and Rachel Zegler perform in The Last Five Years at the Hollywood Bowl The first time I encountered The Last Five Years, I remember...
Every awards season brings with it a nagging, but all too-familiar mixture of excitement and longing. Still, few announcements inspire quite the same feeling of theatrical...
There is something particularly exciting and enticing about this; the shortest of limited runs in an off-Broadway space that only holds ninety-nine people. And it doesn’t...
Two men enter quietly. One takes his place at the piano, the other at center stage. As a radio dial searches for a familiar frequency, snippets...
A grand piano and a pink feathered gown, worn by the unexpected, usher us into this unapologetically delightful romp. Women in black tie and tails and...
Rain lashes the stage as John Millington Synge’s masterpiece comedy The Playboy of the Western World arrives at the National Theatre, with bodies moving through the...
It’s all delicious art deco inside Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels, revived most brilliantly at the Menier Chocolate Factory under Christopher Luscombe’s immaculate direction. The revival arrives...
Bryan Cranston, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hayley Squires, and Paapa Essiedu in the West End production of All My Sons. Photo by Jan Versweyveld. The play opens in...
“I wish.” And they have a way of coming true at Christmas time, sometimes spectacularly, sometimes in ways that surprise you. Sitting down at the Bridge...
As someone who spends a good portion of each week wishing transatlantic teleportation were a standard perk of theatre journalism, I felt a familiar pang of...
Cracking the world wide open, Martyna Majok’s Queens, the superb off-Broadway production from Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center, unfolds like a memory broken...
There are plays that you see, and there are plays that change you. And then, there’s The Laramie Project, a work of theatre so human, so...
He stands, staring, questioning the room and, in a way, his own existence. Each movement is deliberate, one halting step at a time, as if testing...
Frontmezzjunkies is positively vibrating with excitement over the news about Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus — that decadent, delicious battle of genius versus mediocrity. The new limited series...
“Can’t you remember?” he asks his wife, who is reclined with ease and tension on the angular couch, referring to the female guest who is arriving...
The highly praised London revival of Mel Brooks’ legendary musical The Producers is returning and transferring to the Garrick Theatre this autumn, following a sold-out run...
I am not “wedded to calamity,” nor am I a purist by any means, especially when it comes to Shakespeare and the classics. Not to get...
All aboard the MS Americana, as the Shaw Festival‘s effervescent production of Anything Goes sets sail for a spirited crossing filled to overflowing with flavorfully festive...
“I have an idea…” she says brightly, and with that lightbulb moment, most of the mischief of this fabulous farce flies forward. It’s the lightest of...
