Theater

Noah Millman on the promise and pitfalls of cross-gender casting in Shakespeare.

Peter Tonguette on Rodgers and Hammerstein in their day—and ours.

A revisionist account of the great wit’s post-prison life.

What does it do to casually assumed theories of cultural equality if a civilization is founded on the idea that the gods require the ritualized butchering of human beings? When Mel Gibson released his twilight-of-the-Maya epic Apocalypto in 2006, some scholars of Mayan culture felt that the film’s…

Theater companies across the United States are readying productions of Richard III, An Enemy of the People, and other shows that can be pitched as a gloss on current events. Unfortunately, the show that offers the best response to our frenzied times is closing this weekend: Natasha, Pierre, and the…

There was a time when I was surprised that many Americans—even fans of Turner Classic Movies—seemed to think that Alfred Hitchcock was a roly-poly Englishman who somehow ended up in Hollywood and got his start making movies there. The way the story goes, Hitchcock crossed the pond and made Rebecca…

As well, Donald Trump can tell you, New York theater is one tough business. Even the most critically acclaimed shows can struggle to make a buck. Just this year, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat lasted barely 100 performances on the Great White Way. (Though in that case, the market was…

The King and I is on borrowed time. The 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical—a staple of the stage since debut—feels downright subversive in 2017.

You know about the Oscar curse: The notion that winning the Academy Award for Best Actress is great, but often followed by professional oblivion. Is there a New York Times curse as well?

In the traditions and superstitions of the theater, Macbeth is known simply as "the Scottish play." To refer to it by name would be, for some never-explained reason, bad luck. Yet, as far as oblique references, this one provides a fairly apt summary of the sense of the play. At its heart, it is a…

Many theater buildings in Washington house more than one stage. Generally they are at opposite ends of a long hall, or one is tucked away in a spare corner. It is far more unusual for the stages to be stacked on top of one another, as they are in Studio Theatre, where the two stages are connected…

The worst stage performance I ever saw was If Then, an off-Broadway production about hip young adults, standing around, wearing leather satchels, drinking coffee, and singing loudly about big life decisions. Besides having an irritating syllogistic title that wouldn't allow you to forget your own…

In Shakespeare's plays, the forest is always a magical place, where identity itself becomes more fluid. The idea of casting off one's clothes to don an altogether new identity is a theme in several of the comedies, but perhaps never to the same degree as in As You Like It, which is currently…

Sometimes a play's popularity becomes its greatest weakness. When the audience knows—or even thinks it knows—what will happen, and how, and who the characters are, and what to think about their motives and flaws and failings, the performance itself risks being buried under the weight of…

Timeliness is a virtue, and Thomas Klingenstein's Douglass, which had its world-premiere this past summer at the Theater Wit in Chicago, captures the zeitgeist of our period of increasing racial tension. Through Douglass, Klingenstein hopes to reinvigorate our contemporary debates by revisiting the…

Having missed its celebrated off-Broadway run two years ago, I made the trip to a refurbished movie house turned socially conscious cutting-edge theater company to catch Wall Street Journal drama critic (and occasional WEEKLY STANDARD contributor) Terry Teachout's Satchmo at the Waldorf. The play…

Did you know this year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death? Theater-rats have been told this a hundred times by now, but it bears reconsidering. In the course of four centuries, audiences have remained entranced by his work—the same plots, characters, and dialogue—unchanged, ever since.

The Second City comic team on display at the Kennedy Center for The Second City's Almost Accurate Guide to America is a good one. Ryan Asher, Marla Ceceres, Tyler Davis, Sayjal Joshi, Andrew Knox, and Ross Taylor are all excellent comic actors, with impeccable timing, quick wits, and charming stage…

Why, how now, Kate! I hope thou art not mad: This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither'd, And not a maiden, as thou say'st he is. When Petruchio says this to his headstrong wife Katherina, it marks a moment of truce in the full-scale marital warfare that has marked their relationship from the…

What's the hardest role to cast in theater? Surely, one of them has to be Frankie Valli of 'Four Seasons' fame, whose story is told in Jersey Boys. How many actors, after all, can boast Valli's combination of diminutive stature, Mediterranean complexion – and most important of all, that inimitable…

A production of George Orwell's 1984 comes with its own set of questions. How do you perform a very political story without making a political play? Or rather, how does a production handle Orwell's critiques of the totalitarian state without hammering (and sickling?) the audience over the head with…

The play may bear Othello’s name, but the new production at the Shakespeare Theatre Company is Iago's. From the moment Jonno Roberts first appears on the nearly empty stage, the audience's entire attention is his. Menacing, manipulative, and at times raging, he controls the stage, keeping an entire…

The greatest “recognition” scene in Western literature takes place in Homer’s Odyssey, and occurs between storm-buffeted Odysseus and long-suffering Penelope. Shakespeare’s Pericles, a play with deep Hellenic—and specifically Homeric and Sophoclean—undertones, is its closest rival in the portrayal…

This weekend, Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center welcomes Juliette Binoche as Antigone in a new translation by Anne Carson, directed by Ivo van Hove. Sophocles’ Antigone tells the story of Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, who defies the law of the city in favor of the law of the gods (as she…

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is currently playing at Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre, must be a nightmare to direct.

Bob: I've got an idea for a new government program to help homeowners.

A CBS reporter from Arizona reveals that President Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, receives questions from the press in advance of his daily press briefing. In fact, she says, the reporters often receive the answers in advance of the briefing, too.

Les Misérables grabs you by the lapels from the first moment and never lets you go. In this respect it is little different from the stage musical from which it derives—and not so different from the Victor Hugo novel from which the stage musical derives. How you respond to its unabashed histrionics…

The Department of Defense announced that one sailor is missing after the Colorado movie theater shooting, and three servicemen are injured. Here's the press release: 

In brief remarks about the movie theater shooting, President Obama led the audience in prayer and a moment of silence.