Come Again: Sherry Vine Shoots Six Times, Scoring Big with Season 2 of ‘Variety Show’

Come Again: Sherry Vine Shoots Six Times, Scoring Big with Season 2 of ‘Variety Show’

BY SCOTT STIFFLER | There’s something satisfying about the fact that while self-aggrandizing lawmakers in Tennessee and other states were spending 2022/2023 trying to limit, license, discourage, and otherwise disavow drag, Sherry Vine and friends were creating six episodes of variety television that plays such pomposity for laughs, while putting the pursuit of cock where […]

Review: Laurie Metcalf Brings Gravitas to Eerie “Grey House”

Review: Laurie Metcalf Brings Gravitas to Eerie “Grey House”

BY MICHAEL MUSTO | The masses know Laurie Metcalf as the likably neurotic Jackie from Roseanne and The Conners, but insiders have long realized that an in-person, theatrical experience that features Metcalf is generally a capital-E Event. A two-time Tony winner with range and skill, she managed to make the part of the demented Annie […]

Alex Newell Wants To Play Effie—And Other Drama Desk Winner Revelations!

Alex Newell Wants To Play Effie—And Other Drama Desk Winner Revelations!

TEXT & PHOTOS BY MICHAEL MUSTO | The Drama Desk Awards honor Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off, always putting together a talent-studded event that’s like an award winning production in itself. This time, they wisely opted for gender-nonspecific acting categories, picking two winners per category. The winners were announced on May 31 and this Tuesday, there […]

Review: A Great ‘Fat Ham’ Turns The Bard Upside Down

Review: A Great ‘Fat Ham’ Turns The Bard Upside Down

BY MICHAEL MUSTO | Anyone craving a straightforward modern interpretation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet should get themselves to a nunnery instead. Fat Ham—James Ijames’ Pulitzer-winning new play, which has come to Broadway after a run produced by the Public Theater and National Black Theatre—is much more ambitious than that. Using the basic plot themes […]

Glorious, Fierce, Sorrowful, Witty: Songs & Sketches from a ‘Cabaret in Captivity’

Glorious, Fierce, Sorrowful, Witty: Songs & Sketches from a ‘Cabaret in Captivity’

BY TRAV S.D. | There is no adjective, certainly none in English anyway, to describe the emotions stirred up by Cabaret in Captivity: Songs and Sketches Written in Terezin, presented by Untitled Theater Company No. 61 (UTC61) as part of the National Jewish Theater Foundation’s Holocaust Theater Initiative. “Bittersweet” doesn’t cover it, for “bitter” won’t do […]