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Hell hath no fury like a well-intentioned self-appointed watchdog challenged, as David Lindsay-Abaire’s new ensemble comedy The Balusters reminds us. We’ve seen this group dynamic before – in real life possibly, but on stage definitely, most recently in the brilliant Eureka Day and surreal The Minutes…

If you ask me. the most successful musical biopics allow their stars to interpret the song styles of the artists they are playing. Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter, Jeremy Allen White in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Taron Egerton in Rocketm…

Titaníque is more outlandish (and funnier), Something Rotten! was sharper (and funnier) and Smash, well, Smash was none of those. Taking a comfortable, crowd-satisfying spot somewhere in the middle of recent (or recentish) stage musicals that mock stage musicals (and Titaníque qualifies for its…

Noël Coward’s delightful, rarely produced 1925 comedy Fallen Angels is the sort of Broadway fare that gives critics ample reason to use descriptors like “fizzy” and “intoxicating” and “dizzying,” all apt in capturing the pleasures of its airy sophistication and raucous, gutbucket smart…

You don’t have to come equipped with a knowledge of super-advanced mathematics, or even know what two-plus-two equals, to grasp, from the very start of Thomas Kail’s new revival of David Auburn’s Proof, that Ayo Edebiri, so good on TV’s restaurant drama (or comedy?) The Bear, and the Oscar-winning…

Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin has now revitalized two horror franchises that both deal with the villainous undead. In both Evil Dead Rise and The Mummy, Cronin displays a curiosity for using these tropes to display the rot at the heart of the nuclear family unit. In the former, it was clear that Cronin…

Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson make affecting Broadway debuts in The Fear of 13, Lindsey Ferrentino’s based-on-a-true-story play about a falsely accused death row inmate and the woman who loves him from the other side of the bullet-proof glass. Alternately intense and tender, Brody’s…

Don’t let the title fool you. Mother Mary is defiantly not the latest in a long line of Hollywood’s biblical epics. Instead, it’s an exploration of spirituality and reawakening in the life of a mega-pop star who may be part Beyoncé, part Taylor Swift…

Ah, another Broadway musical that positions Tina Turner as a lethal iceberg, a leading man who quotes 20 year old YouTube memes and a time-traveling Céline Dion whose surreal version of a historical tragedy is so much better than the real thing. Dime a dozen, right? Wrong. Titaníque, the…

Don’t waste time asking whether we really need another Death of a Salesman, and certainly don’t even begin to question whether Nathan Lane has the dramatic chops to tackle one of American theater’s great tragedies. Yes we do and of course he does. Director Joe Mantello shines a new light on…

I always look forward to seeing what Jonah Hill comes up with in whatever movie he is cast. A uniquely funny and true original, he takes what could be stereotypes and turns them on their heads. But for the past five years or so he has not had much of a…

An entirely convincing how-to guide in transforming (rescuing, even) well-trod, beloved material (and, yes, the musical that gave us “Memory” is beloved, every bit as much as it is mocked) into something bracing and resplendent, Cats: The Jellicle Ball is that rare thing: A classic stage property…