After last year’s revelatory Lear, the Shakespeare Forum mounts another bold, insightful production for El Barrio’s Shakespeare Festival 2019. This time, it’s Othello(s)–a work that reimagines Othello from the perspectives of different characters: R …Read more

If you missed the Tony nominated and Olivier Award winning Caroline, or Change when it was in New York several years ago, I have good news: there’s a fantastic production currently running in Astoria. In the capable hands of the Astoria Performing Ar …Read more

The Importance of Being Earnest is widely regarded as Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece, and watching NY Classical’s new production at A.R.T./New York Theatres, it’s easy to see why. No word is out of place, no line is not sharply pointed. The comedy rolls a …Read more

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