When Francis and Billy Sloane talk about moving into the house up on the hill—once they’ve fixed it up, of course—their words carry a sense of futility. These characters will never move into the house on the hill. They’ll live pathetically in their c …Read more

In the program notes to the Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble’s production of Don Giovanni, director Owen Horsley mentions the #MeToo movement, and Mozart’s opera about the legendary seducer certainly takes on a new significance in a society replete with clai …Read more

Carmen Jones, currently playing at Classic Stage Company, is pretty much what you’d expect from a show directed by Tony Award winner John Doyle, choreographed by Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones, and starring two-time Tony Award winner Anika Noni Rose …Read more

Nearly 30 years ago, Marlene Dietrich — a German actress who rose to stardom via the 1930 film Blue Angel — left Berlin for Hollywood. There, and later in Paris, she spent years charming moviegoers, making free love, and being an international icon …Read more

Two-Player Game, the new album from Joe Iconis and George Salazar, is the musical equivalent of solid gold. There’s no song that isn’t delightful, no moment that isn’t interesting. The album speaks not only to Joe Iconis’ and George Salazar’s mutual …Read more

Shakespeare’s King Lear is one of the greatest roles in the Western canon, and the true test of any Lear production is how convincingly (and how devastatingly) the lead actor can portray Lear’s fall from the first to final scene. So when I read in th …Read more

Exhibit A: William Shakespeare. Arguably the greatest playwright who ever lived, he gave us masterpieces of English literature like Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar…or did he? Exhibit B: Christopher Marlowe. Shakespeare’s literary rival, …Read more

Caryl Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire is an incredibly dense play. And the production at New York Theatre Workshop, directed by the usually brilliant Rachel Chavkin, feels more like two and a half hours of drudgery than it does enjoyable …Read more

  Edith Piaf may have risen to stardom in the late 1930s, but she started out as a Parisian street singer, and that’s where Piaf! The Show (at FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall) begins. Or, to be strictly accurate, it begins with “L’accordeoniste” — t …Read more

“This is a true story, even the parts that never happened.” So we’re told at the beginning of The Lucky Ones – a musical by folk rock duo The Bengsons (and Sarah Gancher) produced by Ars Nova. Coming as it does before we really know what we’re gettin …Read more