A HERO’S JOURNEY FROM 1862 SPEAKS VOLUMES FOR OUR TIMES Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 first played in 2014 at NYC's Public Theater, yet Suzan-Lori Parks' play pre…
TOO BIG FOR ITS BRITCHES With his touching screenplay as a basis, Lee Hall adapted the 2000 indie Billy Elliot for the stage, setting his moving lyrics to Elton John’s music. There&…
WORLD PREMIERE MUSICAL ADAPTATION MADE EVEN BETTER BY BRYCE PINKHAM It’s tricky turning a movie into a play, given that without the auteur’s camera gimmicks and edits, it can be …
THE EFFECT OF GOOD THEATER “You know, maybe someday you will be pretty,” says Beatrice to her teenage daughter Tillie. Gee, thanks, Mom. Ah, mothers. The Glass Menagerie. Ord…
DON’T CRY, BUT SEE ARGENTINA The crime of being a legend is to be simultaneously loved and hated, while the truth will always be a matter of perspective and interpretation. Eva Duarte,…
THE 90’s ARE BACK AND SOUNDING SWEET While the nineties might not sound that long ago to an older crowd, when was the last time you thought about Lorena Bobbitt? Or tamagotchis? Or won…
IT MAY SUCK TO LIVE ON AVENUE Q, BUT NOT TO SEE IT In the right setting, irreverence is so jovial. Our era of thought-police and political correctness has made it delicious to pervert that w…
A SWEET SAMPLING OF ANIMAL CRACKERS, ALBEIT A BIT DAY-OLD One can easily see why Animal Crackers was a Broadway hit from 1928-1929, followed by a successful movie version. Start with the zan…
HOW’S THE WITHER? (JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WUTHERING…) A complicated nineteenth-century story of love and retaliation, featuring 13 characters, could be tough to pull off …
DAMN, YANKEES DOESN’T HIT IT OUT OF THE PARK While many of Jerry Ross and Richard Adler’s songs from the 1955 Broadway classic hold up rather well, Douglass Wallop and George Abb…
WHAT A SHOCK In 1845, German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann wrote a disturbing but popular children’s book featuring the perils of children who misbehave. AÂ century and a half later…
A FIRSTÂ DATE THAT GOES WELL The device of having characters receive advice from a conscience or someone from their past is tried and true in musicals: They’re Playing Our Song‘…
IT’S WORTH SINGING ABOUT GETTING OLDER Perhaps the only thing worse than getting older is thinking about it. So when a nascent theater company puts on a show"a musical no less"about th…
A LONG RIDE ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In today's world of seeing T-shirts in fancy restaurants, it's almost difficult to envision that, once upon a time, people would dress to the nines for a…
I COULD WATCH 9 TO 5 24/7 In 1980, an unlikely film trio, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton, was the center of 9 to 5, an amusing feminist romp with lovable characters. Years l…
BAD JEWS MAKES FOR GOOD THEATRE, BUT OY SUCH AGITA There's an old joke: "What do you get if you put three Jews in the same room? Four opinions." In Joshua Harmon's Bad Jews, the joke is …
LAMB’S SERVES UP A TASTY DINNER WITH MARLENE There’s an old parlor game of trying to decide:Â If you could attend a dinner party and choose any guests you wanted around the ta…
GIVE YOURSELF OVER TO ABSOLUTE PLEASURE Those familiar with the movie version of The Rocky Horror Show may be shocked to find that there is no typo in the title of the stage version: Here, t…
WHEN IT RAINS, IT SOARS Let’s start with the unavoidable down-side so we can end with the up-side. While Cygnet Theatre’s When the Rain Stops Falling is spectacular, it is ter…
IN GOOD COMPANY In a world of musicals that are filled with catchy harmonies and melodies that stick in your mind, Stephen Sondheim's songs have frequently been the rebels. Sondheim is n…
IT DOESN'T SUCK TO BE AVENUE Q AT CORONADO In the right setting, irreverence is so jovial. Perhaps our era of thought-police and political correctness has made it delicious to pervert that w…
DRAG YOURSELF DOWN TO PAGEANT Exiting Cygnet’s revival of Pageant, my writing pad, normally filled with pages of barely decipherable notes, had nothing upon it but the title. This …
THE GREAT CALL OF CHINA The very nature of adoption can leave a child"and the adult he or she becomes"filled with questions: Who were you, Mother? Â Why did you make this choice? Â Do yo…
TRAGIC FOR HIM BUT GOOD FUN FOR US Hot on the heels of the run of Old Jews Telling Jokes, the Lyceum brings us a very different and more personal look at Jewish humor. Instead of a non-s…
WHAT, WOULD IT KILL YOU TO HEAR A JEWISH JOKE, I ASK YOU? A German, a Frenchman, and a Jew are crawling across the desert. The German says, “Mein Gott! I’m so hot and thi…