Callaway Jazzes the Movies
[Original published in Theater Pizzazz, November 3, 2017.] Ann Hampton Callaway is a Chicago girl with one of the biggest hearts in cabaret. On a recent evening at Birdland, on […]
He Said, He Said: “M. Butterfly” Takes Wing on Broadway
[featured image: Clive Owen and Jin Ha in M. Butterfly. Photos: Matthew Murphy.] [Original published Clyde Fitch Report November 1, 2017] Julie Taymor’s elegant revival of David Henry Hwang’s 1988 play M. Butterfly remains a […]
DeLaria Sings Bowie at Birdland
[Original published in Theater Pizzazz, October 27, 2017.] Lea DeLaria holds court with passion and grace in her David Bowie tribute show. Twice a night through Saturday October 28 at […]
The Home Place: Persnickety Plot Paralyzes Political Play
[Original published in The Clyde Fitch Report, October 11, 2017.] Sometimes a beautiful woman’s yearning gaze isn’t sufficient to hold a piece of theater together that has too many moving […]
Advice and Consent: Nia Vardalos Finds “Tiny Beautiful Things”
[Original published in The Clyde Fitch Report, October 3, 2017.] Tiny Beautiful Things has returned in quiet triumph to the Public Theater after last season’s sold-out engagement in the tiny Shiva […]
Son to Forgive His Betraying Mother? Ask “The Treasurer”
[Original published in The Clyde Fitch Report, September 27, 2017.] What happens to a 13-year-old boy when his mother leaves the family for another life? “She left and poof, there […]
“Mary Jane,” Mom to Chronically Sick Child, Gently Explodes
[Original published in The Clyde Fitch Report, September 27, 2017.] There’s quiet devastation in the all-female voices of Amy Herzog’s Mary Jane, now playing at Off-Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop after a run […]
Teaching Manners to Build a Community
[article as originally published in TDF Stages, September 18, 2017.] MCC Theater’s new drama focuses on a one-of-a-kind charm school Northlight Theatre‘s artistic director, BJ Jones, was so taken with a […]
Searching for a Shore, This Family Settles Into Silence
[Original published in The Clyde Fitch Report, September 17, 2017.] On the Shore of the Wide World, first staged in Manchester and London in 2005, is the first Atlantic Theater Company show of […]
Women in Charge
[Original published in Prologue (the OSF member magazine), Fall 2017 .] Two playwrights, Kate Hamill and Karen Zacarías, prove that female characters are limited neither by their senses nor their destiny. […]
Melissa Manchester, Her Fellas, and Unexpected Joy
[article as originally published in Theater Pizzazz, September 14, 2017.] “I finally made it to Birdland!” Melissa Manchester, who has had a career of many decades, with more than a score […]
Are You Ready for a Resurrection?
[Original published in TDF Stages, September 13, 2017.] How a multimedia artist is bringing a Long Island family back to life — Alison S. M. Kobayashi has an offbeat hobby. […]
Sugar Sing Along Loses the Beat
[Original published in Theater Pizzazz, September 11, 2017.] Tony Roberts, one of the original stars of Sugar, the 1972 Broadway musical based entirely on the Billy Wilder, cross-dressing, Prohibition-era comedy […]
An Experimental Argument: Ethan’s Lipton’s Outer Space Odyssey Toward a Sustainable Life
[Original published in HowlRound, September 8, 2017.] Ethan Lipton has assembled a creative family of musicians and designers who have worked with him on a series of projects in New York […]
“If Only”: Ann, Samuel, and the Love That Might Have Been
[Original published in The Clyde Fitch Report, September 6, 2017.] Stories about crossing class, caste and racial divides offer rich theatrical and cinematic possibilities. Far From Heaven, a recent example as a 2002 […]
Things Can Really Hang You Up the Most — Inanimate
[article as originally published in Theater Pizzazz, August 31, 2017.] Modern society is packed with machine-crafted and hand-hewn objects intended for display or consumption or decoration. In societies of abundance, we […]
urban excavations 