1,085 stories from Show Showdown
Caryl Churchill is not in love with the sound of her own voice. (Many playwrights are, along with many people in every walk of life.) While Churchill has a tremendous amount to say, her writ…
That the American justice system is worse than broken--dangerous, dishonest, racist--is not news. Some innocent people have been coerced into confessing, others have accepted plea bargains r…
I am not a fan of Arthur Miller's. But I like to revisit works to see if I've missed something. Having recently reread Death of a Salesman and seen the The Village Theater Group pro…
In Garside's Career, written by Harold Brighouse before the first World War, Peter Garside is a skilled mechanic and avid Union member in 1914 Midlanton, England. He has just completed a uni…
Photo by Josh Goleman. Design: Armistead Booker
When playing chess never move your pawn to F4 since it makes your king vulnerable and, as Kevin James Doyle advises, "If you're playing anyo…
The delightful NAATCO-Play on Shakespeare all-femme, all-Asian-American production of Shakespeare's Cymbeline only runs through Feb. 15. If you are a fan of first-class theatre that is…
Mrs. Loman, Barbara Cassady's sequel to Death of a Salesman, starts right after Willy's funeral. Linda Loman, her sons Biff and Happy, and next door neighbor Charley and his son Bernard gath…
When the curtain came down on Act 1 of Gypsy, my friend Susan said, "She's so wrong and she's so good." Excellent summation!
I was one of those who greeted Audra's casting with, she's miscas…
Based on both the reviews and word of mouth, I went into Target Margin's "re-envisioning" of Show Boat (here called Show/Boat: A River) with low expectations. Sadly, it lived down to them.Â…
A built-in weakness in some comedies of ideas is that one side of an argument may simply be right. As someone who believes strongly in vaccines, I thought Eureka Day might have to wrestle…
 I reviewed Women Writing Musicals on Talkin' Broadway.
One of the stranger parts of aging is watching time go from "now" to "then" to "retro" to "no one on Jeopardy knows the answer."…
Last month I had the pleasure of attending the TRU (Theater Resources Unlimited) benefit. The TRU mission:
TRU was formed to promote a spirit of cooperation and support within the general t…
Last week, the wonderful MasterVoices presented the Gershwins' Strike Up the Band. In 1927, its book, about a war over cheese tariffs, was written by George F. Kaufman with a pretty sa…
Lynn Riggs (1899-1954) wrote 30 plays, a few of which were produced on Broadway, along with screenplays and poetry. Nowadays he is known--when he is known at all--for having written Green Gr…
What is honor? That's a particularly relevant question as we head into the election. Is honor reputation? Or is it something between a person and herself? What value does honor have? Do most…
The American Classical Orchestra (ACO), described by its founder/conductor as "our labor of love," utilizes period instruments to better produce classical pieces as the composers composed th…
Annette is winning at life. She has just negotiated a major promotion; her boyfriend Charles is attractive, considerate, and wealthy; their major life challenge is whether to stay in the Upp…
One is not supposed to focus so much on trees that you miss the forest, right? I get that. But what if they're really big, ugly, focus-grabbing trees?
I suspect that Client-Attorney…
There's a little gem playing at the Wild Project through September 28th. One set, 80 minutes, with terrific and compassionate writing (Matthew Freeman), directing (Jessi D. Hill), and acting…
On one hand, there could never be too many books about Stephen Sondheim. On the other hand, each book should be able to justify its existence through untold stories (are there any?), a new p…
First, how cool is it that Suffs exists, and that it's so good, and that it's been recognized and rewarded? And how sad is it that the show is still timely? But things are changing. The n…
A lovely, if somewhat overlong, dance revue about humans telling stories and being oh-so-human, Illinoise is based on the beautiful songs of Sufjan Stevens and an original story by choreo…
The Transport Group's Follies in Concert had all the makings of a magical evening, but for many of us, the magic was intermittent at best. For a fascinating, multifaceted discussion of th…
Second Stage's Breaking the Story (closing today) has a lot of goals for its 85 minutes: depict the PTSD of a war journalist, discuss the meaning and ethics of journalism, show a woman…
Well, this is an opinion piece, so I should perhaps make the subtitle "A Very Satisfying Event for Me." A quick glance around the web reveals that I was not in the majority.Â
I do, of cou…
