279 stories by "Elyse Trevers"
Mr. Saturday Night I'm a staunch Billy Crystal fan, and judging from the audience's reaction at the Nederlander Theatre the other night, I'm not alone. I love Crystal's quick wit, easy laugh…
Once upon a time there was a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan called The Five Points. For over 70 years, it was a crowded slum, populated mostly by newly -freed slaves and ethnic Irish. Altho…
A female press secretary, a female chief of staff, a first lady and several female assistants but even all of them together can't keep the hapless president from occasionally opening his mou…
Black comedy, or gallows humor, is a style of story telling that makes light of subject matter usually considered somewhat taboo, like death, suicide and disease. Either term applies to Mart…
"The Minutes" Playwright Tracy Letts possesses the extraordinary ability to lull an audience into expecting something dry and ordinary but then making it explosive. Teaming up again with Ann…
Food is often the centerpiece of family holidays and celebrations. In "Birthday Candles", the new play presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre, the speci…
Photo by Julieta Cervantes When TV's Murphy Brown was mocking singer Barry Manilow, I was buying his albums and attending his concerts. I was unabashedly a Fanilow. So I looked forward to "H…
What a quandary! There was a new show to review, but it was opening night for my favorite baseball team. Which one should I choose? The theater won this time. A timely revival of Richard Gee…
When we see married actor couples working together on stage, we feel a special connection. It's as if we are in on the joke. We expect chemistry and smile when they kiss and caress because w…
When was the last time you smiled for two hours? Were you wearing a mask? Under their masks, audiences at the Winter Garden Theater are grinning broadly eight times a week. Despite any criti…
For many audiences, Phylicia Rashad will always be the elegant unflappable TV wife/mother/lawyer in The Cosby Show. She came into their homes every Thursday like a welcome friend. After the …
Lynn Nottage must be the hardest-working playwright in New York, having written three shows for the Fall 2022 season. First was Clyde, a terrific show about ex-convicts and second chances. D…
A viewer should be prepared for intense theater when attending a Eugene O'Neill play. If the show is "Long Day's Journey into Night," she should be ready for a lengthy assault on her emotion…
It's been almost 25 years since the 1997 release of the first Harry Potter book. Its young readers have grown up, gotten jobs and now have families of their own. Do the Harry Potter characte…
Only Stephen Sondheim could have taken a motley group of would-be murderers and made them sympathetic and funny. At one time, a musical about killing presidents would have been controversial…
It felt strange to be attending a show last Saturday night instead of sitting in front of the television waiting for SNL to begin. Fortunately, the play was "The Search for Signs of Intellig…
By now, everyone associated with musical theater has written a tribute to legend Stephen Sondheim who died Nov. 26, 2021 at age 91. Productive until the end, Sondheim died while working on a…
First let's get rid of the elephant in the room- Rob McClure, hardworking star of Broadway's "Mrs. Doubtfire" is NOT Robin Williams who created the 1993 movie role. However, he doesn't have …
"What's your justification?" demands the director, prodding his actors to consider their characters' motivations in the play "Trouble in Mind." Playwright Alice Childress had her own motivat…
For some, food is merely sustenance; for others, it is an art form. And for the former convicts who work at Clyde's, a truck stop in Berks County, Pennsylvania, the perfect sandwich may offe…
Siblings can be a blessing. It's even nicer when they live nearby. In "Morning's at Seven," the revival of Paul Osborne's play at the Theatre at St. Clement's, they are a little too close. T…
Photo credit: Joan Marcus We have a conflict in America. While it is built on the shoulders of immigrants,and the Statue of Liberty stands tall in New york harbor, our policies discourage im…
A group of characters gather at Laine's boarding house. They are running away from something or to something. It is 1934 in Duluth, MI, ( actual birthplace of Bob Dylan) and people are still…
The playwright George Bernard Shaw must have been a feminist long before the movement became popular. He used his plays to decry the few opportunities for women and observed how they were be…
 One young man rejects a scholarship to MIT so he can stay home to care for his mother and younger siblings; he's Depression. An older Nigerian man shares knowledge and tales from his yo…
