I keep expecting to get jaded. Even though the actuarial tables tell me that I'm more than halfway through my life, I can still be a teenaged drama club kid, over and over again, with only the slightest provocation. Yesterday was one of those days.

Like so many in "the...

I have seen Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd many times over the years, probably more than any single show. It has thrilled me, scared me, impressed me, made me laugh. I mouth the words, I bob my head, I conduct in imperceptibly small movements of my hands. But until this past...

For a certain breed of relatively cultured wags (including the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay Abaire and, less exaltedly, me), Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass box at the Museum of Modern Art is a comedic source that just keeps on giving. After all, this is an Academy Award-winning actor...

British arts journalist Matt Trueman wrote an intriguing piece for the Financial Times this past weekend, about the relative scarcity of new plays from America being produced in England, and vice versa. New Yorkers may not think this is the case, given the fairly steady flow of high...

Perhaps you were asleep. Or drowsy. Or buzzed from a drinking game.

Perhaps you were focused on the dress. You were comparing it to all of the evening's other dresses.

Perhaps simply didn't want to watch and stuck with your regular Sunday evening diet of zombies.

But the fact remains...

If you are looking to read yet another blog post filled with snark for, or describing the "hate watching" of, the television series Smash, this is not the post you're looking for. Move along.

With the second season of Smash now underway, to precipitously underwhelming ratings, I'd like to discuss...

It is unfortunate that "zirkusschadenfreude" is not an actual German word, because there seemed to be a lot of it flying around last week, that is to say, "joy at the unhappiness of a circus." Many news outlets and commentators were pulling out the wordplay a bit gleefully last week...

While the idea of all-arts talk radio, modeled on sports talk radio, may strike one upon first thought as rather absurd, I think my friend Pia Catton is really on to something in her enthusiastic pitches for just such a thing both this week and last...

Trustworthy? Loyal? Helpful? Friendly? Courteous? Kind? I don't think so.

I think the leadership of the Boy Scouts of America has abandoned its right to claim these words that are part of their "law," with their actions both today and in the past. The failure to protect boys...

Over there, on my bookshelf, sits the biography of my friend Alan. In its index, you can find an entry, "infidelities and romantic liaisons," which directs you to pages 97-98, as well as page 209. This is, for me, rather disconcerting.

It is perhaps inevitable that if you work in...

My mother was trained as an elementary school teacher. She got her degree in the 1950s, at New Haven Teacher's College. When she graduated, she taught in the New Haven school system. When she had the first of her three children, in 1960, she stopped teaching to raise us, returning...

There's an uproar in certain quarters over Time Warner Cable's plan to drop Ovation TV from its line-up at year-end. With Ovation currently in some 55 million households, the loss of Time Warner's approximately 12 million national subscribers is going to be a big hit - in viewers,...

When I think about controversial shows that meet resistance in high schools, Legally Blonde hasn't made my list. I've previously pondered where the new high school musicals may (or may not) be coming from; I inserted myself into a controversy over a threatened production of August Wilson's Joe...

It's hardly surprising to learn about a hit Off Broadway show moving to Broadway. It's been happening for years, both with shows that began at not-for-profit companies or as commercial ventures. Open small, get great reviews and sales, move beyond the confines of a much smaller theater to reap the...

To begin with, I would like to stipulate that I read Pete Wells' now-legendary New York Times review/take-down of Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant and I found it, as so many did, a striking and funny piece of writing. I read it, I imagine, with my mouth agape,...

There is an oft-repeated cry from certain corners of the creative community lamenting the lack of political theater on our stages. Yet I seriously doubt that the Republican Theater Festival is what they had in mind.

I say this not to criticize the festival, currently on in Philadelphia,...

Life, god willing, is long. Plays are short.

Though perhaps we don't think about it often, it bears remembering that plays and musicals, which can encompass so much, usually run about two to...

Sanjay at Froghammer must be so proud. You remember Froghammer, the firm brought in by the New Burbage Festival to shake up its advertising and audiences, to cast off their stodgy image? So bold, so vibrant, so current. Oh yes, and (spoiler alert) as it turned out, a fraud.

It's...

Life and safety are most important. A place to live comes next. Then jobs, business, livelihoods. In the wake of the storm that just slammed New Jersey and New York, these are the priorities, first and foremost.

But it's my nature to turn to thoughts theatrical, and there's no question...

Toronto's Globe and Mail is breaking up with me. So is The Chicago Tribune. I just know it. And it's hardly because I've been two-timing them. They've always known that when it comes to quality journalism, I can't be satisfied by any one media outlet, or two, for that matter.