One talks, the other doesn’t, but both speak volumes by debunking magic while, at the same time, showing how dazzling honest trickery can be. They’re Penn and Teller, together for four decades, during which time they morphed from off-Broadway enfants …Read more

As they do every so often, stories of audience members behaving insufferably at the theater become newsworthy—usually making the papers because some actor or fellow playgoer finally pushes back. For example, in 2013, theater critic Kevin Williamson w …Read more

One can tell by the packed house in the Downstairs Theatre at Paradise Factory — on a Monday evening, no less — that Sitting Regal by the Window is one of Planet Connections Theatre Festivity’s great finds. The festival, dedicated to invoking the p …Read more

The storied journey of The Visit to Broadway has been recounted many times,  in 2015, fourteen years after its first planned tryout, The Visit finally made it to Broadway. It was a short two month visit, during which it earned five Tony nominations, …Read more

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! has become the musical theatre equivalent of comfort food; like a hearty bowl of chili it’s always there to make us feel warm when we need it, but in the Bard Summerscape production of the beloved musical, we reali …Read more

Rashid and Leila, a young Egyptian-American couple, sit propped up in bed together. They smoke fake cigarettes while they analyze their own psyches and behavior. (It’s something one imagines them doing on a regular basis.) “I think we can be too clev …Read more

Productions of Oliver Goldsmith’s 18th-century classic She Stoops to Conquer are usually lushly produced with great swaths of Georgian drapery swooping behind the furniture and over the actresses, visual elements that are part and parcel of the play’ …Read more

Messy and complex are not synonymous as is proved in Mike, a muddled “play with music” in which four characters share a dinner none of them will want to remember. Daniel (played by a lanky, charming Leo Defriend) is obsessed with a phone app which he …Read more

By now it’s common knowledge that brothers Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick achieved the unthinkable by having their very first musical skip out-of-town previews and open successfully on Broadway in the spring of 2015. Something Rotten! was one of the onl …Read more

Sea of Souls, devised by the Ion Theater Company of San Diego, is a witty, fast-paced play about friendship, loyalty, and accepting the past. Written and directed by Glenn Paris and Claudio Raygoza, this authentic, drama-filled story is set in the la …Read more