New York

Review: ‘Woman and Scarecrow’ at Irish Repertory Theatre

Marking its first production of a work by the internationally-lauded Dublin-born playwright Marina Carr, Irish Repertory Theatre’s New York premiere of Woman and Scarecrow, potently directed by Ciaran...

News: The Highwood Theatre Presents All-Student Production of ‘West Side Story’

As the capstone of its first-ever ‘Year-Long Production,’ The Highwood Theatre is honored to bring the landmark musical, West Side Story, to the stage in downtown Silver Spring. The production – the...

Review: ‘Gypsy’ at the Cumberland Theatre

The original full title of the show now playing at the Cumberland Theatre was Gypsy: A Musical Fable. Emphasize that final word. Gypsy Rose Lee was none too particular about the facts of her life in...

Review: ‘The Adams Family’ by Rooftop Productions

Full Disclosure? The Addams Family was a wild romp for the whole family! I made my way down to Oldtown Manassas to see Rooftop Productions’ take on The Addams Family. The story feels like a great...

Review: ‘Unexpected Joy’ at The York Theatre Company

Though gynocentric themes featuring lead roles for women are a welcome new trend in contemporary theater, there’s little new or unexpected in Unexpected Joy, an original musical by Bill Russell (book...

Interview: Actress Gayle Carney Discusses her Off-Broadway show ‘The Promised Land’

Gayle Carney has played a myriad of roles in her many years as an actress. She’s been seen most recently in The Dog Must Die at Highwood Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland. That play is a dystopian...

On Her Own: Judy Kuhn’s Solo Cabaret at Dumbarton Concerts

Maybe you can go home again. Broadway’s original Cosette from Les Miserables, Bethesda native Judy Kuhn, returns for a solo concert, A Broadway Cabaret With Judy Kuhn, 8 PM May 5 at Dumbarton United...

Review: ‘It Came from Beyond’ at St. Luke’s Theatre

Mid-century aficionados and other interested earthlings can take a time-traveling trip back to the ‘50s at St. Luke’s Theatre with the Off-Broadway premiere of It Came from Beyond, a silly musical...

Review: ‘An American in Paris’ at the Hippodrome Theatre

Think of the latest “new” Gershwin touring show up at the Hippodrome Theatre — An American in Paris — as a G.I. “jukebox musical” with legs. About a hundred of them, it seems. And, boy oh boy, have...

Review: ‘THE RESTLESS HEART: A program of Old Russian, Gypsy (Romani) and Folk Songs of Passion, Longing and Love’ at The Embassy of France

“This concert series is dedicated to Russian chamber vocal music, which is rarely heard in America,” states the program; a regrettably true state of affairs. The Russian Chamber Art Society (RCAS),...

Review: ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ at the Lyric Theatre

Amazing bursts of magic that dazzle in the darkness, distinctive characterizations of a host of eccentric, endearing, and evil personalities by an enthralling cast, a complex and compelling tale of...

Review: ‘SUMMER: The Donna Summer Musical’ at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre

As with all of the shows in its genre, the latest offering in the surge of biographical jukebox musicals on Broadway, SUMMER: The Donna Summer Musical, holds appeal for a built-in audience of the...

Review: Young Artists of America Presents ‘Ragtime in Concert’

Young Artists of America and the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras of Strathmore joined forces to present a concert version of Ragtime last Sunday, April 15th. The performance, which took place in the...

Review: ‘The Seafarer’ at Irish Repertory Theatre

Mystic realism and metaphor meet the Irish gift of gab and a dire predilection for alcohol in Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer, a disturbingly dark and devilish comedy about lost souls, drunken...

Review: ‘Three Tall Women’ at the Golden Theatre

Brilliant. Extraordinary. Ingenious. Superb. The best. Yet all adjectives and superlatives pale in comparison with the truly unsurpassed quality of the script, performances, direction, design, and...

Previewing ‘Stepchild, A New Musical’ in the Rough Draft Festival at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center: An Interview with David James Boyd, Chad Kessler, and Kim Weild

As part of LaGuardia Performing Arts Center’s Rough Draft Festival, IRT Theater and TGF 12 Productions have teamed up for a workshop presentation of Stepchild, A New Musical, inspired by the popular...

Review: ‘Luzia’ at Cirque du Soleil in Tysons

For a Cirque-head such as myself, anticipation of a new Cirque du Soleil show coming to town kicked in months ago. It had been two long years since Cirque last pitched its Big Top here, with Kurios –...

Review: ‘Motown the Musical’ at the Hippodrome Theatre

The fun of seeing Motown the Musical starts a few hours before leaving for the theater. Just the promise of that glorious oldies playlist is like inner ear foreplay. There isn’t much that puts a...

Review: ‘Children of a Lesser God’ at Studio 54

When Mark Medoff‘s award-winning play Children of a Lesser God premiered on Broadway in 1980, followed by the highly-lauded film adaptation in 1986, it provided groundbreaking insights into the need...

Putting It Together – ‘Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution,’ by Todd S. Purdum (Book Review)

How do you solve a problem like translating music into words? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Music is a gossamer thing, difficult to pin down with language. As the critic Winthrop Sargeant...

Review: ‘Mean Girls’ at the August Wilson Theatre

If you’ve ever witnessed (or worse yet, experienced, encouraged, or participated in) the “girl-on-girl crime” of high-school cliques, malicious gossip, fierce competitiveness, and vicious...

Review: ‘Wicked Frozen’ at St. Luke’s Theatre

What do you get when you cross the super-popular hits Wicked and Frozen with a Boston accent? The laugh-out-loud musical parody Wicked Frozen, presented by John Lant and making its Off-Broadway debut...

Review: ‘Lobby Hero’ at Second Stage Theater

In the current American climate of daily accusations of “fake news,” public denials of misdeeds, not-so-secret cover-ups of illegal activities, and arbitrary job terminations of public officials at...

Review: ‘Rocktopia’ at The Broadway Theatre

A mash-up of classical music with classic rock, Rocktopia, co-created by vocalist Rob Evan (of New York stage and Trans-Siberian Orchestra fame) and Maestro Randall Craig Fleischer (a noted Conductor,...

Review: ‘Angels in America’ at the Neil Simon Theatre

London’s blockbuster National Theatre production of Angels in America – Tony Kushner’s sweeping two-part eight-hour epic about AIDS, politics, and gay life in America in the 1980s – has alighted on...

Review: ‘Newsies’ at Toby’s Dinner Theatre

There’s nothing fake about the news out of Toby’s Dinner Theatre. Its homegrown production of Newsies gathers such a concentration of explosive male talent under one roof that Columbia might consider...

Review: ‘School of Rock’ at the Hippodrome Theatre

Dewey Finn, the schleppy hero of School of Rock, is a modern-day Maria Von Trapp, leading children to find happiness through music. While posing as a substitute teacher, he shares his passion for...

Book Review: The Baron of Broadway, ‘Unmasked: A Memoir’ by Andrew Lloyd Webber

One sunny afternoon in 1984, Andrew Lloyd Webber (not yet “Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber” or “Baron Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton” as he is known today) paid 50 cents for a used copy of Gaston Leroux’s The...

Review: ‘Dogs of Rwanda’ at Urban Stages

In Dogs of Rwanda, now making its Off-Broadway debut at Urban Stages, playwright Sean Christopher Lewis revisits the horrors of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and the scars they left – both physical and...

Review: ‘Escape to Margaritaville’ at the Marquis Theatre

If you’re in the mood for a fun-filled island vacation, look no further than Manhattan Island and the Broadway premiere of Escape to Margaritaville at the Marquis Theatre. With music and lyrics by the...

Review: ‘A Burial Place’ at The Wheel Theatre

If you’re looking for proof that big things come in small packages, then you need look no further than the tiny black box theater where A Burial Place, produced by the Wheel Theatre Company at the DC...

Review: ‘Admissions’ at Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

A new twist on the old adage attributed to former Philadelphia Police Chief and Mayor Frank Rizzo, “A liberal is a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet,” Lincoln Center Theater’s production of...

Review: ‘All the Ways to Say I Love You’ on Audible

If you love the New York stage and its stars, but can’t make it to the theater in person to see a live performance, Audible, a subsidiary of Amazon and the world’s largest purveyor of audiobooks,...

News: A Farewell Letter from DCMTA Writer Richard Seff

I didn’t want to slink off into the night without saying so long to you very lovely DC fans at DC Theater Arts. It was time to go, and I’m grateful for the space in which to get sentimental for a...

Review: ‘Rap Guide to Consciousness’ at SoHo Playhouse

Do you ever wonder about the nature of awareness and the mechanics of perception? Luckily for us, Baba Brinkman does, and returns to SoHo Playhouse with his well-conceived and brilliantly entertaining...

Review: PostClassical Ensemble’s ‘Deep River: The Art of the Spiritual’ at the Washington National Cathedral

When is art an intentional expression of respectful cultural appreciation and when is it an unconscious foray into cultural misappropriation? These were some of the deep questions raised in Deep...

An Interview with Award-Winning Actor Dan Hodge: Making his Off-Broadway Debut in the New York Premiere of ‘Dogs of Rwanda’

Just concluding his comic roles in the Walnut Street Theatre’s national touring production of Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, with its final performances this week in California,...

Review: ‘The Amateurs’ at Vineyard Theatre

The latest work by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Jordan Harrison, The Amateurs, now making its world premiere at Vineyard Theatre, is a profound and witty meta-theatrical meditation on the purpose of art...

Review: ‘The Pillowman’ at Vagabond Players

Just about at the midway point of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, Katurian K. Katurian – the writer of macabre short stories who is the focus of the play – mutters the phrase: “There are no happy...

Review: ‘Brilliant Traces’ at The WorkShop Theater

Through the hand of fate, two lonely and damaged strangers have been brought together in an isolated cabin in the Alaskan wilderness, each suffering the effects of familial trauma, the devastation of...

Review: ‘Fire and Air’ at Classic Stage Company

Terrence McNally has been a steady contributor as a playwright ever since his first play, And Things That Go Bump In The Night landed on Broadway in 1963. It didn’t bump for long; it played a few...

Take the Stage Announces Annual Broadway Revue ‘Dynamic’

Dynamic showcases the best of Broadway and movie musical numbers choreographed by our own talented directors and special guest artists including Broadway and film actress and New York choreographer...

Review: ‘Frankenstein’ at St. Luke’s Theatre

Marking the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s classic horror novel of 1818, Frankenstein, a new musical with book, music, and lyrics by Eric B. Sirota, focuses less on the monster and more on the man...

Review: ‘Hey, Look Me Over!’ by Encores! at City Center

To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the very successful Encores! series threw us a party by offering its seven audiences (February 7–11) a potpourri of book scenes and musical numbers from eight...

Review: ‘Stick Fly’ by ANKH Repertory at the Gaithersburg Art Barn

Stick Fly is a boiling stew of classism, colorism, parent-child dynamics, unspeakable secrets, and marital choices. With a cast every bit the equal of Lydia R. Diamond’s Broadway-produced script, you...

Review: ‘The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940’ at Bowie Playhouse

Complete with double identities, hidden passages, murders, and mystery, The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 is the type of comedy that blends the serious with the silly. Sharply directed by Jane B....

Review: ‘The Chekhov Dreams’ at Theatre Row

Whether you love the works of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov or hate them, you can’t help but enjoy The Chekhov Dreams, a dark and witty world-premiere rom-com by John McKinney. Presented at Theatre...

Review: ‘[PORTO]’ at WP Theater

Now in its impressive Off-Broadway premiere at WP Theater in association with New Georges, following a critically-acclaimed run in the 2017 Exponential Festival at The Bushwick Starr (co-presenter of...

Fifteen Top Theater Picks for Valentine’s Day in NYC

If you’re in New York City for Valentine’s Day and planning to celebrate your love of the stage, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher Nicole Hertvik and Senior Reviewer Deb Miller have some suggestions for a...

Review: ‘Waitress’ at the Hippodrome

You will want to leave a more-than-generous tip for the national tour of Waitress, especially if you appreciate top-notch service. It is currently bringing all the spicy baked sweetness of the...