Conversations with Mother, Matthew Lombardo's semi-autobiographical comedy currently running at Theater 555, is a crowd-pleasing show that traces the relationship of a mother and son over fi…
British playwright Harold Brighouse's legacy rests largely on Hobson's Choice, his well-crafted comedy from 1915 that satirizes class hypocrisies and gender roles. Though best known for its …
Charlie Chaplin's appreciation for Japanese culture has been well documented. He visited Japan several times, and he had a deep admiration for the physicality of both Kabuki and kengeki (sam…
George Bernard Shaw famously dubbed Shakespeare's Cymbeline "stagey trash of the lowest melodramatic order." Appalled by the ludicrous coincidences and tangled plot lines, Shaw rewrote the l…
The past and present collide in Anthony M. Laura's Duality, currently running at the Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre at The A.R.T./New York Theatres. Primarily, the play explores the lasting…
Former stand-up comic Sam Kissajukian states matter-of-factly at the beginning of his one-person show, "I'm not from the theatre. I'm from Australia." In 300 Paintings, currently playing at …
Stereophonic, this year's Tony Award winner for Best Play, is set in the 1970s and depicts rampant toxic masculinity in the recording industry. The New Group's current production, Babe by Je…
First dates are generally awkward, sometimes cringeworthy, and occasionally hopeful. In Miriam Battye's Strategic Love Play, Audible Theater's current production, these familiar qualities ar…
Spike Manton and Harry Teinowitz's Another Shot, now running at New York's Signature Center (but is not a Signature production), is set in an addiction rehab facility. The title slyly hints …
How long is it appropriate to grieve one's personal loss? Are some losses worthier of sympathy than others? Is there a proper way to grieve? These are just some of the questions pondered, de…
Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author caused a cultural firestorm when it opened in Rome in 1921. Reportedly, after the show's premiere the playwright had to leave through…
Following in the nimble footsteps of Twyla Tharp and most recently Justin Peck, choreographer and dancer Jakob Karr has turned to the music of a contemporary singer/songwriter to create a na…
On June 12, 2016, the attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando was (at the time) the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. It remains the most violent assault on LGBTQ+ people. Set…
Mark Twain's preface to "Huckleberry Finn" famously states, "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banish…
A program note states that New York's AMT Theater in Hell's Kitchen was established for several different purposes, including serving "as a launching pad to Broadway" and presenting "childre…
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, an "invasive species" is one that "has been intentionally or inadvertently brought into a region or area. Also called an exotic or non-nativ…
In the last few decades, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) has made huge technological advances in speech-generated tools, but it is hard to imagine a dramatic love scene prod…
Eating disorders, adolescent trauma, motherhood, and managing an acting career are just some of the topics explored in Fingers and Spoons, the one-person show written and performed by Pascal…
Midway through Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel, "Orlando: A Biography," the protagonist awakes after a long sleep as a different gender. "It is enough for us to state the simple fact," the narra…
It is very common for audiences at Broadway musicals to clap and hoot at the entrance of a star or in appreciation of impressive scenic design. In Hell's Kitchen, which concluded an Off-Broa…
Although it won a slew of Tony Awards in 1975, The Wiz has never really been considered a great musical. In the right hands, however, it is a thoroughly enjoyable one, and its buoyant pleasu…
In his scathing review of The Outsiders, Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of S.E. Hinton's best-selling novel, New York Times critic Vincent Canby described the movie as "a melodramatic kid…
If you appreciate macabre stories, here's one you might enjoy: In 1976, a teamster working on an episode of "The Six Million Dollar Man" made a gruesome discovery. One of the dummies hanging…
For Shakespearian scholars, Pericles, Prince of Tyre remains a profoundly enigmatic work. While some historians have attributed sole authorship to Shakespeare, most now agree that he wrote a…
With its use of deliberately over-amplified and disembodied voices, video close-ups, and shiny, modernist design, The New Group's production of the The Seven Year Disappear would seem to be …