Off-Broadway

Cheryl Freeman insists that she’s only set foot in a Wal-Mart once. “I went to the one in Secaucus, New Jersey, in April to get rain boots,” recalls Freeman, who stars in the Off-Broadway musical satire Walmartopia. Freeman offers this fact as if it were a guilty confession. That’s understandable, since Walmartopia, written by the […]

It may sound like a rock musical with peace on its mind, but in fact Rock Doves, whose title is a common name for pigeons, is another lively, gritty play about life in Northern Ireland from Belfast’s Marie Jones (Stones in His Pockets, A Night in November), which opens at Irish Arts Center on Sept. […]

To say that Kate Mulgrew is “in a good place” right now would be an understatement. Given that she’s starring in Iphigenia 2.0, Chuck Mee’s free-wheeling modern take on Euripides, at the Signature Theatre, you might even call it a tragic understatement. “Going to the theatre right now is going on wings,” effuses Mulgrew, who’s […]

“Our show is all about used-car salesmen in a fishbowl,” joked Steven Cosson, the director and compiler of Gone Missing, the Off-Broadway hit by the hip New York-based theatre company The Civilians, just extended at the Barrow Street Theatre through Jan. 6, 2008. In fact there are no cars, fish or sales staff onstage in […]

“I would never use those words, but I don’t object to them,” says playwright Sarah Ruhl, referring to a pair of adjectives often applied, and not always admiringly, to her form-defying plays: “wacky” and “quirky.” Though she claims not to read reviews, she has certainly heard these words directed her way, but, she insists, “I’d […]

Cast in the dual roles of twin brothers in Christopher Shinn’s anguished, riveting drama Dying City (at Lincoln Center’s Newhouse Theatre through Apr. 29), Tony-nominated actor Pablo Schreiber did some very important primary research. “I watched Raising Cain,” says Schreiber from his dressing room before a performance, referring to the 1992 potboiler featuring an over-the-top […]

For many comedians, laughter is a drug so grafitying and addictive that they’ll do almost anything to keep feeling it. But for standup comic Judy Gold–whose one-woman show 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother is in a long run at the Theatre at St. Luke’s–a sense of connection with an intent audience can be just […]

“People are a bit desperate in my plays–maybe more desperate than we’re used to seeing people be in plays,” admits Theresa Rebeck, whose current play at the Second Stage, The Scene, traces the steep descent of Charlie, a self-destructive, chronically unemployed actor. “I go to other plays and think, Where’s the desperation?” Rebeck is only […]

Allegedly during the 1970s in France there was a movie critic who never actually saw the films he reviewed. He waited until all his colleagues had written their reviews. Knowing their personalities, their tastes, and-this being France in the ’70s-their theories, he wrote a review based on what those who had seen it had said […]