Thursday, January 28, 2016
Every year, American Theatre magazine publishes a list of the country's most-produced playwrights. It makes sense that Ayad Akhtar topped the latest edition: His award-winning plays, many pe…
SOURCE: Vulture at 06:53AM[SHARE]Thursday, January 21, 2016
Anna Cantor, the title character of Our Mother's Brief Affair, is a suburban matron, a passive-aggressive parent, and, even in the throes of semi-dementia, a genius with a barb. (As long as …
SOURCE: Vulture at 01:44PM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Will we ever stop arguing about Mother Courage and Her Children? From the time Brecht wrote it, in 1939, as Fascism was approaching its orgasm in Europe, until three weeks ago, when Tonya Pi…
SOURCE: Vulture at 10:48PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 14, 2016
The key thing about farce isn't the slamming of doors but the solidity of walls; without rigid order there can be no liberating chaos. The carpentry is crucial, and I doubt there's ever been…
SOURCE: Vulture at 09:33PM[SHARE]Monday, January 11, 2016
When Hamilton opened Off Broadway at the Public Theater last February, and then transferred to Broadway in August, many of the reviews, including mine, used words like historic, groundbreaki…
SOURCE: Vulture at 07:56PM[SHARE]Sunday, December 20, 2015
It's hard enough to revive a musical that didn't work the first time; that's why John Doyle's new version of The Color Purple is rightfully such a sensation. But it may be an even harder job…
SOURCE: Vulture at 11:00PM[SHARE]Saturday, December 19, 2015
There are several ways to define a Broadway theater, all tautological. It's a theater that uses a Broadway contract. It's a theater in the Broadway district " Sixth Avenue to Eighth Avenue, …
SOURCE: Vulture at 12:21PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Whether you will like These Paper Bullets! " the new Bard"on"Carnaby Street confection at the Atlantic " will probably depend on how much you like Much Ado About Nothing. Depend inversely, I…
SOURCE: Vulture at 05:54AM[SHARE]Friday, December 11, 2015
How can deprivation become joy? That's not only the animating question of The Color Purple, the 1982 Alice Walker novel made into a musical in 2005, but also the operating principle behind J…
SOURCE: Vulture at 08:18AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 9, 2015
This week Vulture will be publishing our critics' year-end lists. Monday we ran TV and movies. Tuesday covered albums, songs, and books. Today, look for theater, art, and classical performan…
SOURCE: Vulture at 09:30AM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Here's a sampling of things you'll experience at Lazarus, the illustrated concept album disguised as a musical now playing at New York Theatre Workshop: one alien, two serial killers, three …
SOURCE: Vulture at 05:53AM[SHARE]Monday, December 7, 2015
A disreputable charmer brings the joy of music to a staid community while stirring up romance with an uptight lady: If the plot of School of Rock sounds like a great musical, that's because …
SOURCE: Vulture at 07:14PM[SHARE]Friday, December 4, 2015
Only in a weak Broadway field could The Wiz have won seven Tony awards, as it did in 1975. Its competition included Mack & Mabel, Shenandoah, and The Lieutenant (which ran for two weeks)…
SOURCE: Vulture at 06:40PM[SHARE]The opening number of Gigantic, a new musical set at a summer camp for hefty teens, is actually called "The Weight Is Over." That's about the high tide of wit in this chore of a show, which …
SOURCE: Vulture at 06:40PM[SHARE]Al Pacino is not an actor of much breadth but he stakes a narrow territory deeply, and that can be brilliant to watch onstage. China Doll, his shaky new Broadway vehicle, by David Mamet, off…
SOURCE: Vulture at 06:40PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 3, 2015
There is no such thing as a wholly true play. The nature of the theater distorts reality, finding all sorts of holes in the historical record and inexorably filling them in. (Actors have to …
SOURCE: Vulture at 07:28AM[SHARE]Sunday, November 29, 2015
Just before the final preview of New York Animals last night, Eric Tucker, the show's director, warned the audience that the "glamorous and exacting" play about to begin was still being rewr…
SOURCE: Vulture at 09:45PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 24, 2015
"Satire is what closes on Saturday night," said George S. Kaufman, but that was 90 years ago. Today most satire closes " that is, shuts down internally " before it ever hits the stage. Have …
SOURCE: Vulture at 08:12AM[SHARE]Thursday, November 19, 2015
How many Steves does it take to screw up a marriage? Steven and Stephen are a long-term couple with an 8-year-old son and intimacy issues. Steven's old friend Matt, and Matt's partner, Brian…
SOURCE: Vulture at 08:39AM[SHARE]Monday, November 16, 2015
The meta-drama of Arthur Miller's plays, much in evidence during this, his centenary year, is the conflict between his moral energy and the theatrical formats in which he (sometimes only bar…
SOURCE: Vulture at 08:00AM[SHARE]Sunday, November 15, 2015
It's an odd paradox that as Broadway fare grows more generic, genre pieces flail. Suspense is especially moribund; A Time to Kill tanked in 2013, and it may be that the last really successfu…
SOURCE: Vulture at 10:28PM[SHARE]Friday, November 13, 2015
Critics, if not theatergoers, often bemoan the tide of revivals flooding Broadway each fall. This season, the ratio of old plays to new is about two to one. But why should revivals be consid…
SOURCE: Vulture at 06:40AM[SHARE]Thursday, November 12, 2015
British actors have a ritual " or at least Ian McKellen does, because I saw him do it once " of blessing a new stage by kissing it. (He then recited a Shakespearean monologue, but that part'…
SOURCE: Vulture at 10:57PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 10, 2015
When a play trains its basilisk gaze on a demographic you belong to, it may seem as if the playwright took notes inside your head. That's how I felt, anyway, at Dada Woof Papa Hot, Peter Par…
SOURCE: Vulture at 07:21AM[SHARE]Monday, November 9, 2015
The home that Isaac returns to at the beginning of Taylor Mac's smart but deliberately disorienting new play Hir is not the one he left when he enlisted as a Marine three years ear…
SOURCE: Vulture at 08:24AM[SHARE]Friday, November 6, 2015
I'm no fan of jukebox musicals. If they're the type that tell an invented tale, like Mamma Mia! or Rock of Ages, the book is generally rendered idiotic by the effort to accommodate the songs…
SOURCE: Vulture at 12:15AM[SHARE]Monday, November 2, 2015
American leaders usually don't come under theatrical scrutiny until decades after they leave office. The first serious mainstream plays about Presidents Johnson (All the Way) and Nixon (Fros…
SOURCE: Vulture at 07:19AM[SHARE]Friday, October 30, 2015
Keira Knightley says she has been approached at least three times to play Thérèse Raquin in one or another adaptation of the 1867 Zola novel. She finally succumbed when offered Hel…
SOURCE: Vulture at 08:26AM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 28, 2015
If, like me, you enjoyed Annaleigh Ashford as the daffy romantic factory worker in Kinky Boots (for which she won a Clarence Derwent award) and loved her as the talentless balletomane in You…
SOURCE: Vulture at 06:03AM[SHARE]Monday, October 26, 2015
Great plays are usually great in one of two ways. Either they are culminating examples of existing ideas, or groundbreaking examples of new things entirely. The Humans, by Stephen Karam, at …
SOURCE: Vulture at 06:14AM[SHARE]Thursday, October 22, 2015
Like the M34 bus, Michael John LaChiusa never disappoints for long: If you don't enjoy one show, another will come by soon. At 53, he remains probably the most prolific of his cohort of thea…
SOURCE: Vulture at 06:30AM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
