By Samuel L. Leiter   Sharon Washington is an African-American actress of a certain age. I’ve seen her on stage before but never, in my recollection, in a role that demonstrated her considerable talents as vividly as in Feeding the Dragon, the one-woman play that she both...

  Samuel L. Leiter Says:   Religion, artistry, politics, opera, romance, and, most distinctively, culinary achievement are among the many delicious ingredients in Babette’s Feast, Rose Courtney’s amiable stage adaptation of the 1950 short story of that name by Danish author Karen...

  by Samuel L. Leiter   The word “refugee” in Old Stock’s subtitle is as fraught as ever but the refugees depicted in this unusual musical are not from any current world crisis. Instead, they return us to the days of the early 20th century when the Jewish diaspora was sending...

  By Samuel L. Leiter   Admissions, by Jonathan Harmon (Bad Jews), is one of those provocatively electric plays that, even as it bugs you with disagreeable ideas, annoying characters, or dramatic contrivances, nonetheless holds you firmly in its grip because you feel you’re watching...

      by Samuel L. Leiter   If you grew up during the mid-twentieth century you didn’t have to be a classical music fan (or even Jewish) to recognize, and probably recite, the names of the four internationally renowned, Jewish violin maestros who dominated the concert...

    By Samuel L. Leiter   Did dinosaurs and humans coexist? I always thought not but an online search suggests alternative opinions. At any rate, they certainly do in Alexander V. Thompson’s bizarre comedy, Pete Rex, performed by the Dreamscape Theatre. Actually, for all the...

    by Samuel L. Leiter     Sports fans! Don’t be deceived by the glam promo shot of actress Terri Mateer, star of A Kind Shot, showing this tall drink of Gatorade in high heels, a black bustier, and miniskirt, made up, with her blond hair blowing in the wind and a...

      by Samuel L. Leiter   I first heard of the Bengsons (Shaun and Abigail), a married, indie-folk-punk-rock duo, in 2016 when they arranged and consulted on the music for a funky show at the Flea, Sarah Gancher’s The Place We Built, set in a Budapest...

  by Samuel L. Leiter   During the early 1950s, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), one of twentieth-century Japan’s greatest and most unusual writers, wrote many original plays for both the modern and traditional theatre; he even combined these interests by writing nine modern noh plays....

    by Samuel L. Leiter   The spectrum my headline mentions isn’t the new name for Time-Warner; it’s the syndrome of incurable neurological disorders called autism. Autism or autism spectrum disorder (ASD)—and the related Asperger’s Syndrome—comes in many shades and colors; it...

          By Samuel L. Leiter   If you love physical comedy in the manner of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin or, to cite more recent exemplars, Bill Irwin and David Shiner, you owe it to yourself to witness the comedic art of Jos Houben and Marcello Magni in...

      by Samuel L. Leiter   It’s not till near the end of William Donnelly’s No Wake that the playwright clarifies the meaning of his title; by then, sleepy theatregoers at this lugubrious 90-minute effort will have come up with alternative interpretations. Originally...

  by Samuel L. Leiter   No one says “the cat’s pajamas” in George Kelly’s The Show-Off  but, in 1924, when this drawing-room, domestic comedy in the well-made play tradition opened, ran for 571 performances, and nearly won the Pulitzer Prize, it’s likely that’s what Broadway’s...

    By Samuel L. Leiter   The trickle of Shakespeare-to-musical comedy adaptation business that began on Broadway in the 1930s with The Boys from Syracuse and Swingin’ the Dream has swelled over the years to where it’s now something of a flood. Just last week there was a...

      by Samuel L. Leiter   Despite this show’s poorly punctuated slogan, “There’s smoke, and fire,” anyone worried that Come Light My Cigarette might expose them to secondhand smoke can breathe easy; tobacco—even of the herbal variety—has no role in it. There are, though,...

        by Samuel L. Leiter   Ovo, which means “egg” in Portuguese, is about the cycle of life, or at least that’s the loose theme around which this typically eye-popping incarnation of the Cirque du Soleil franchise revolves. Like other Cirque productions (this one’s...

          by Samuel L. Leiter   Horton Foote, the admired Texas playwright who died at 92 in 2009, wrote so many worthy plays it’s rare for a season to pass without at least one being revived. The latest is The Traveling Lady, a bittersweet romantic piece, now at...

      by Samuel L. Leiter Sometimes in the world of theater reviews we stumble across the good fortune of having pieces by two different esteemed critics, allowing us to see comparative and contrasting viewpoints—always an intriguing experience. This is one such time and, if...

    by Samuel L. Leiter   Film buffs, especially those who know the 1942 movie classic Casablanca and something of its backstory, will get a kick out of Casablancabox, Sara Farrington’s decidedly clever and ambitious multimedia piece, wonderfully staged by her husband, Reid...

      by Samuel L. Leiter   “Where was the helicopter?” asked the gentleman snaking his way out of my row at intermission at Miss Saigon. “It’s in the second act,” quickly replied my companion. Ah! Some people do actually go to Broadway musicals to sing the scenery. And he...

        by Samuel L. Leiter     Stephan Wolfert’s Cry Havoc! is a deeply impressive one-person play about the horrors of war. It isn’t, however, so much an anti-war play—the morality or necessity of war itself isn’t being questioned—but an outcry against what war...

  . . .  or My Dinner with André the Giant     by Samuel L. Leiter   It’s hard to conceive of any more unlikely pairing for a play about two familiar, real-life figures than Samuel Beckett, the distinguished Irish playwright, poet, and novelist of existential despair, and...

        by Samuel L. Leiter   Long, quiet, moody stretches are punctured by pockets of laughter in the Playwrights Realm’s production of The Moors, emerging playwright Jen Silverman’s surrealistic, feminist approach to mid-19th-century, Brontë-esque life on the bleak...

    by Samuel L. Leiter     A large, upside down American flag—considered a signal of distress—hides the stage from view. As the muffled words of President George W. Bush are heard in the background, two soldiers, one in formal uniform, the other in fatigues, take it down...

          by Samuel L. Leiter   A wall is very much in the news these days; however, the crumbling, vine-covered one that fills the upstage area in the New York premiere of Robert Holman’s Jonah and Otto—which debuted in Manchester, England, in 2008—has nothing...