Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show storms back to Broadway at Studio 54 with a gleeful sense of mischief and theatrical abandon, reminding audiences why this cult classic has endured for more than half a century. Under the exuberant direction of Sam Pinkleton, this revival fizzes with irreverent energy and a game, starry ensemble, delivering…
Baize Buzan (Photo: Alexia Haick) Beauty Freak By Julia Polinsky James Clements has given us a new play about Leni Riefenstahl. She was one of the more fascinating and polarizing people of the 20th century. Unquestionably a feminist pioneer, she was also a monster of pragmatism, using concentration-camp inmates as extras in her film, then…
I saw the title The Balusters and thought OK, this will be about Mr. and Mrs. Baluster. Wrong! Turns out a baluster is “any of the small posts that support the upper rail of a railing, as on a staircase,” as Webster has it. They’re of concern to architectural preservationists and hardly anybody else, and…
Schmigadoon! is a triumph of choreography and the chorus are first-rate singers and dancers. The show, however, is musical lite. The premise: Two Manhattan doctors hope to salvage their troubled relationship at a Catskills retreat. Instead, a hike leads them across a bridge to Schmigadoon, an early 20th-century hamlet that eagerly breaks into song whenever…
Here’s an idea. Let’s take Beaches, an iconic, cult classic movie, replace the award-winning soundtrack, and put it on stage, without its famous stars! After all, it’s a slam dunk, adapting a Broadway show from a film. Oh, that’s right, it’s NOT. Examples? Despite stars Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain, Breakfast at Tiffany’s was…
The tradition dates back at least to Oh, Boy! in 1917, and though it’s since fallen out of favor, it held sway for decades: the notion that an unlikely character getting inebriated was automatically hilarious. Comic drunk scenes were a staple of pre-Code movie comedies, and they populated plenty of plays, too. Fallen Angels, Noel…
Love. Intelligence. Genius, even. Betrayal. Sacrifice. The revival of David Auburn’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning Proof, now at the Booth, has all this and more: great structure, superb writing, knockout performances. Proof centers around Catherine (Ayo Edebiri), a slouchy, visibly depressed 25-year-old college dropout, the daughter of Robert, (Don Cheadle) who in his younger days was…
The ultra-violent Titus Andronicus is now enjoying (if you can use that word) a splendid revival at Signature Theatre, in the skillful hands of the Red Bull Theatre Company. And oh, is it sensational! Prepare yourself for the horrific story. Titus Andronicus (Patrick Page) is a Roman general who has returned after a ten-year war…
When I first heard about a show titled No Singing in the Navy, premiering at Playwrights Horizons, the same institution involved with works like Sunday In The Park With George, Floyd Collins, and William Finn’s Falsettos trilogy, I was intrigued. Playwrights Horizons has long been the home for ambitious new musicals and a launching pad for major American theater. So…
Who would have thought watching people behaving badly could be so much fun? Now at the Hayes Theatre, and directed by Trip Cullman with bloodthirsty zeal, this revival of the Pulitzer-nominated Becky Shaw seems even fresher than it did in its Off-Broadway run almost 20 years ago. Playwright Gina Gionfriddo toys with our initial perception…