178 stories by "Helen Shaw"
Shakespeare’s brooding prince comes off as bored at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. But Bedlam’s lean production of “Othello” is positively thrilling.
Lea Michele, Adrien Brody and other boldface names were left out, while June Squibb, André De Shields and Layton Williams as an iceberg were among the surprises.
Wilson’s 2024 adaptation of Herman Melville’s classic, with music by the British singer-songwriter Anna Calvi, has a short run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
A Broadway musical adaptation of the 1987 movie gets a lot of mileage from ’80s rocker aesthetics and over-the-top spectacle — until its second half.
This revival starring Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson may be uneven at times, but it still unlocks Wilson’s mysterious drama.
Sam Pinkleton’s new revival at Studio 54 gives us the big gay mayhem we want while also maintaining some order via Rachel Dratch’s droll Narrator.
David Lindsay-Abaire’s comedy about a wealthy homeowners association thrown into disarray makes a case for the same social compact it skewers.
The actress stars as a haunted genius opposite Don Cheadle as her father in David Auburn's 2001 drama. This revival, though, exposes the play's lack of rigor.
Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson make confident Broadway debuts, but the uneven script makes for a narratively slippery prison drama.
Arthur Miller's classic tragedy returns to Broadway, starring Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf. Yet again, it is a triumph.
For their 10th life, the cats strut and duckwalk in a reappraisal of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1981 musical, which has shifted to the queer ballroom scene.
The directors Michael DeFilippis, Dmitry Krymov and Aleksandr Molochnikov all infuse their current productions with a burning, modern rage.
In Mark Rosenblatt's play, a powerful portrayal of the beloved children's book author who almost gleefully exposes his bigotry.
Antigone, an ancient Greek play, is being adapted in several theaters across New York City. Our critic Helen Shaw explains why Sophocles's anti-heroine is such a relevant figure today.
"Antigone" gave us the original "bad girl," but its themes go beyond that. How do adaptations keep making Sophocles' ideas about democracy and theater new?
Two monologue revivals " Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Truman Capote and Wallace Shawn's solo " reveal how wealth warps our perceptions. Only one pays dividends.
Encores! revisits a Jazz Age tale of debauchery, with showstoppers from Jasmine Amy Rogers, Adrienne Warren, Jordan Donica, Tonya Pinkins and others.
The actor's fondness for the audience radiates outward in this delightful interactive play about naming and noticing the good in the world.
Anna Ziegler's feminist take on Sophocles tries to tie in reproductive politics, but the play keeps trampling over its own ideas.
The Times's new chief theater critic is taking up the mantle as the industry moves over rocky ground.
The playwright and his collaborator André Gregory are together again, delivering a sumptuous set of interlinked monologues about life, death and betrayal.
In the stage versions of two beloved books, the most impressive moments emerge when the productions stray from the source material.
Clare Barron's gorgeous play, about an unmoored young woman returning home to care for her father, finds a new home at Cherry Lane Theater.
Without the usual flood of new musicals, the playwrights of works like "Becky Shaw," "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Giant" are getting a chance to shine.
Theater for a New Audience's reimagining of the Shakespearean tragedy misses an opportunity to engage the play's many echoes with our own tense era.
