If you’re looking for a recipe for a successful revival of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 masterpiece, a major ingredient has to be Brian Bedford.  This British born Canadian resident is among the world’s greatest actors of classical material, tragic and comical.  In comedy, he has no peer. The career path he’s chosen since 1959 when he […]

The new year begins, ominously. For reasons they’ve chosen not to share with us, a consortium of eleven producers led by “Bram Stoker’s Dracula Ltd.”, decided to dig up the original Hamilton Deane-John L. Balderston plays  which were based on the novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker. No adaptation, no update, just an airing for 2 […]

I knew little about Andrew Jackson, our seventh President, when I entered the Jacobs Theatre on Broadway at an Actors’ Fund Benefit performance this past week.  When I left, I knew quite a lot, but it certainly wasn’t presented to me in the ways of the old schoolhouse I knew as a kid taking my […]

Driving Miss Daisy is a holiday gift from some seventeen producers (imagine, for a play with 3 actors, 3 costumes and a few set pieces!). It’s a gift because, although the play is a pleasant visit with 3 interesting characters, its primary virtue is it offers two roles with which to lure the best we’ve […]

I have two winners for you this time, as opposed to my last column which featured two on the down side.  First, La Bête, a farce by David Hirson, presented on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre by Scott Landis and Sonia Friedman among a dozen others. 

It’s with regret that I must tell you that the Lincoln Center Theatre, which has been so spectacularly run by André Bishop and Bernard Gersten  for the past twenty odd years, has come a cropper – twice – at the start of their new season.  Mr. Gersten joined Lincoln Center as executive producer in 1985 […]

In the words of William Feaver, the author of the book on which this play by Lee Hall is based, “It’s often said the play’s the thing. Here though, projected above  the heads of the actors — demonstrating once again that art making is art appreciation and art appreciation is also a zest for life—pictures, […]

For those of us old enough to remember the film version  of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter, a warm glow descends upon us whenever it’s brought to mind. For those even older who were exposed to the one act play on which the film was based (called Still Life, a part of Tonight at 8:30), there […]

I’m certain Bernard Shaw’s plays will pop up regularly well into the future. They are replete with ideas that were in their time disturbing and provocative, and Lord knows they offered stunning roles, particularly for women.

The New York Theatre Workshop, founded in 1979, is “dedicated to exploring and presenting theatrical experiences that reflect, respond to, and invigorate a world in which we live and work.”  The latest example that intends to justify this lofty aim is Ivo Van Hove’s production of Lillian Hellman’s most successful and enduring play,