In just the first minutes of Bess Wohl's "Grand Horizons," a supremely funny comedy of marital malaise presented by Second Stage Theater, Jane Alexander and James Cromwell deliver a miniatur…
Shots ring out. A man falls dead at the hands of an unknown killer. Enter an investigator to sort through a hefty pile of suspects and bring the culprit to justice. Charles Fuller's Pulitzer…
When the theater goes to the library for inspiration, the results can often be disappointing. Even great books can wither and wilt when they are adapted for the stage. A happy if not entirel…
Love is most certainly for sale at "Harry Connick Jr.: A Celebration of Cole Porter." Although the composer-lyricist is justifiably renowned for his coruscating wit and insouciant wordplay, …
In "You Learn," the song that concludes the new musical "Jagged Little Pill" on a note of hard-won, almost downbeat uplift, a lyric from Alanis Morissette recommends the advantages of "bitin…
If you don't respond with a moist eye and a swelling heart to "A Christmas Carol," Charles Dickens' classic tale of a miser's spiritual redemption, I wouldn't go so far as to call you a Scro…
Most Broadway seasons feature at least one show that gathers an aura of importance even before it opens. This year it is undoubtedly "The Inheritance," Matthew Lopez's two-part, nearly seven…
"Slava's Snowshow," which has returned to New York for a limited engagement more than a decade after its first Broadway run, is not your typical holiday fare. While the show's cast is made u…
To the long list of adjectives we toss around like verbal confetti to describe Kristin Chenoweth " radiant, impish, perky, sunny, funny! " we can now add fearless. In her concert at the Nede…
If a single voice, or a single performance, could send a Broadway musical soaring to greatness, "Tina: The Tina Turner Musical" would handily qualify as one of the best musicals to emerge in…
The company returns to Lincoln Center to celebrate its founder, performing many of the late choreographer's masterworks October 29"November 17.
"We're on a road to nowhere," David Byrne sings in the final encore of his Broadway concert, "American Utopia," at the Hudson Theatre. Can we get an encore of that encore, please? While …
Pop quiz question: Can you name a single writer darker than Dostoevsky? The options are few, but I hereby nominate Adam Rapp, the playwright and novelist whose vision is so unrelievedly grim…
You think your dad (or mom) is a deadbeat? Consider the plight of the young characters in "The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical," a thoroughly endearing family-friendly musical at …
As Serafina Delle Rose, a grieving Italian-American widow struggling to open herself to life again in Tennessee Williams's "The Rose Tattoo," Marisa Tomei bares just about all, emotionally s…
A sad romantic comedy sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it's an apt-enough description of "Linda Vista," a slight but funny and quietly affecting play from Tracy Letts, which has ope…
If there's anything more boring than hearing about other people's dreams, it's hearing about their therapy sessions. And, to my mind, hearing about people's sexual fantasies " admittedly not…
If "gerund" isn't the very last word I ever expected to hear uttered on a Broadway stage, it's probably pretty darn close. Broadway rarely gives grammar lessons, after all. And yet there…
When incendiary current events are leaping from your TV screen into your lap on an almost hourly basis, a play such as "The Great Society" has a tough row to hoe. How to excite audiences wit…
As a literary luminary slowly sinking into senility, thrashing through his failing memory like a man battling the suffocating grip of quicksand, Jonathan Pryce gives a performance of remarka…
Where did that infernal banana go? This is not the kind of question you expect to be rattling around your brain during an evening of theater. And yet rattle me it did more than once duri…
There are three principal characters, unfixed points in an adulterous romantic triangle, in Harold Pinter's 1978 play "Betrayal," now being revived to thrilling " and chilling " effect on Br…
Love and marriage. Birth and death. Sorrows and joys. Loss and renewal. Bacon and eggs. Whoops " sorry! My mind wandered to breakfast plans while I was attempting to think of something i…
The Broadway exclamation point " once a marquee staple, later an overused joke " makes a roaring comeback with "Moulin Rouge!" This new musical, based on the Baz Luhrmann movie set in and ar…
It's only in the final moments of the moving new Broadway revival of Terrence McNally's "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune" that the consummate musician in Audra McDonald emerges. True…