New City Stage’s ‘Frost/Nixon’

Nixon meets his match

As this masterful production makes abundantly clear, makes clear, Frost/Nixon is really about television: how it simplifies complex ideas and entire careers into a single snapshot.

Mark Wolverton

Dec 23, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Lantern’s ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ (2nd review)

Even in Wales, was Christmas ever this somber?

Would it be too much to ask that a few kids be cast in a play that’s so purely wrapped up in the wonders of youth?

Jake Blumgart

Dec 21, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Lee Breuer’s ‘La Divina Caricatura’

A dog’s search for meaning

Lee Breuer’s two-and-a-half-hour multi-media music-driven puppet extravaganza is an American epic, featuring a dog with an addiction to a bad master and a longing for fame who spirals into the depths of popular cultural despair and unexpected spiritual teachings.

AJ Sabatini

Dec 21, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Curio Theatre’s ‘Gender Comedy’

Do you really think Shakespeare’s comedies are funny?

In the sophomoric and absurd Gender Comedy, Curio Theater does to Twelfth Night what should be done to Twelfth Night.

Jake Blumgart

Dec 21, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Pig Iron’s ‘Twelfth Night’ (2nd review)

What would Shakespeare say?

Audiences at Twelfth Night laugh when Sir Toby Belch falls prey to Maria’s merry and deserving pranks. But nowadays, thousands of Internet surfers fall victim to not-so-merry pranksters hiding behind the cloak of anonymity. Oh, for the good old days.

Alaina Johns

Dec 17, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

‘Story of My Life’ in Wilmington

On re-connecting with an old friend

This sweet and unassuming musical about two friends drifting apart closed quickly on Broadway after a New York Times critic gave it the kiss of death. It deserved better, as two revivals have demonstrated.

Steve Cohen

Dec 17, 2013 · Articles · 2 minute read

Why so many Macbeths?

Hamlet vacillates, Macbeth kills (and guess which we prefer?)

All of a sudden, Macbeth has become “the new Hamlet,” with five high-profile productions in the past two years. What does this ruthless murderer’s new popularity tell us about ourselves?

Carol Rocamora

Dec 17, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Lantern’s ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ (1st review)

An antidote to sugarplum treacle

A Child’s Christmas in Wales is a Christmas show for people like me who hate Christmas shows but love stage enchantment without cliché or trite sentimentality.

Gary L. Day

Dec 17, 2013 · Articles · 2 minute read

A real miracle (not on 34th Street)

Miracle in Bryn Athyn (such as it is)

For the last 60 years or so, no Christmas tale has bored people of all ages more than Miracle on 34th Street. Who could have imagined the genuine miracle this show produced last weekend at my conservative Christian high school alma mater?

Alaina Johns

Dec 10, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Pig Iron’s ‘Twelfth Night’ (1st review)

A night of Shakespearean hits and misses

Pig Iron Theater attacked Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with all the gusto and finesse of a bar brawl, to the audience’s delight, but not so much to mine. But check out that theater!

Gary L. Day

Dec 10, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read