As West Side Story and The Lion King demonstrate, Shakespeare-inspired musicals can work wonderfully — but only when done right. Happily, Boomerang Theatre Company’s Loveless Texas, a new musical by Henry Aronson and Cailin Heffernan, gets it exactl …Read more

How do you write the perfect constitution for a new government? That’s merely one of the questions Mickaël de Oliveira’s play The Constitution asks. Perhaps even more central than the question of the constitution is the idea of love: what it means to …Read more

Thomas Klingenstein’s play If Only…, directed by Christopher McElroen at the Cherry Lane Theatre, is a moving depiction of the relationship between a white woman and a black man whose matchmaker was Abraham Lincoln. Set in New York in 1901, If Only …Read more

If you run quickly through a list of Shakespeare’s tragedies you may notice something: Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear – the title characters are all men. Of course, there’s also Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra – but no woman stands alone …Read more

“The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements,” Lady Macbeth exclaims, gesturing triumphantly at the sky. A particularly loud helicopter has just flown by overhead, causing Lady Macbeth (Jenny Strassburg) …Read more

Shakespeare’s comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona lends itself well to piracy, and director Ariel Leigh picks up on the hint in her swashbuckling production at The Brick. For my tastes, the play could have used even more piracy, but as it is, I’ll tak …Read more

It’s a happy chance that for their second Shakespeare in the Parking Lot production this year, The Drilling Company chose not to stage Julius Caesar – though they considered it – but Henry VI Part 3: one of Shakespeare’s most seldom performed history …Read more

After its controversial, deeply serious production of Julius Caesar, The Public Theater’s second Shakespeare in the Park production aims for light-hearted fun and fantasy. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (directed by Lear deBessonet) captures all the magic …Read more

Once upon a time, there was a book that everybody loved. A short time later, this book got turned into a movie which everybody hated. Finally, the book got turned into an Off-Broadway musical which everybody loved, and everyone lived happily ever aft …Read more

Jennifer Jewell’s solo show Goblin Market is headed to the 2017 Edinburgh Festival Fringe later this summer. But first, Jewell performed her solo show at 59E59 Theatres in NYC. And if the Edinburgh audience is as captivated by Jewell’s performance as …Read more