106 stories by "Mark Dundas Wood"
It seems sometimes that every other entertainer working these days has a Trump impersonation at the ready, though many seem to miss the mark by a mile. I've never been especially enthused ab…
Robert Patrick's Judas comes to us from 1973, the same year in which his most famous drama, Kennedy's Children, was first produced. Judas is a sort of modern-dress passion play"it traces Bib…
In Henry James' 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle, a man named John Marcher fails to connect with a woman who cares for him. Marcher has a premonition that something horrible will befall …
There's been some well-intentioned talk in the last couple of years about how artists might help bridge the chasm between red states and blue, or"maybe even trickier"the gap between red and …
At a hasty first glance, Alexander V. Thompson's Pete Rex"staged by The Dreamscape Theatre, in a New York premiere at 59E59 Theaters"may seem a piece of comic whimsy about a world in which d…
British playwright Stanley Houghton's Hindle Wakes (currently at the Mint Theater Company) was written and first performed in the era when Sigmund Freud's ideas on sexuality were becoming kn…
A cheeky little time capsule from 1971, The Workshop Theater's revival of Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? provides glimpses of the loose, inventive spirit of the youthful Terrence McNally. It'…
It's been said that people congregate in kitchens at dinner parties because the food-prep area is a "backstage" space, somewhere where folks can be their authentic selves. In the kitchen, yo…
We probably don't need another reminder right now that a compact brain, the miracle of fire, and a few lines of iambic pentameter are pretty much all that separate us from our prehistoric an…
American musical theater has frequently had a political bent, from the satirical Gershwins-scored Of Thee I Sing (1931) through to Off-Broadway's current revue Me the People, which skewers t…
We seem to experience bursts of elation whenever some whiz-bang gerontologist suggests that human life can be extended in ways previously considered impossible. It's as if we've all been off…
The conscious effort to mainstream the alt-right movement in the Trump era has, of course, troubled many Americans deeply. So it's understandable that New Yiddish Rep would want to stage Rom…
At the top of Act II of William Shakespeare's As You Like It, when the audience first glimpses the Forest of Arden, the banished Duke Senior (who is hiding out there) pronounces life in the …
The new Off-Broadway musical Curvy Widow (at Westside Theatre/Upstairs) shares plot points with one of Broadway's biggest current musical hits, Hello, Dolly! Both shows present a middle-aged…
Austrian-born screen star Hedy Lamarr (originally Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) was often touted as the world's most beautiful woman. In the monodrama Hedy! The Life & Inventions of Hedy Lam…
According to program notes for Mint Theater Company's new production of A.A. Milne's 1922 play The Lucky One, the British playwright (and, of course, creator of the "Pooh" books) had a dista…
In her new play, The Antipodes, at Signature Theatre, Annie Baker once again uses the trappings of naturalism to tell a contemporary story that veers at times into the realm of magical reali…
William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba (1950) seems to owe much to the plays of his friend and mentor (and probable sex partner) Tennessee Williams"and in particular to 1944's The Glass Mena…
In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, Tennessee Williams's 1969 one-act (two scene) play, is such a dark, bitter work that it would seem wrong to call seeing it a "rare treat." But the current produc…
New York Animals, a "play with music" produced by Manhattan's Bedlam theatre company, takes a look at a collection of New York beasts of various stripes and spots"people whose lives i…
At age 10 Avi Hoffman (born Avrum Ber, in 1958) made his theatrical debut in a Yiddish Folksbiene Theater production called Bronx Express. In the decades that followed, the performer, a son …
Some stories linger in the incubation stage. Patiently"or not so patiently"they wait to be told, to make their way into the public consciousness. Then, uncannily, when they finally burst int…
Rashid and Leila, a young Egyptian-American couple, sit propped up in bed together. They smoke fake cigarettes while they analyze their own psyches and behavior. (It's something one imagines…
For many of us, our lifelong love affair with the theater first blossomed in summer. Summer theaters provide on-the-job training for young actors.
Back Stage talked with some students recently about their experiences in several of New York's musical theater training programs.
