‘Pretty’ isn’t always a compliment. It can also be code for what a woman is not — sharp, ambitious, or (heaven forbid!) ‘difficult.’ In the case of Vivian Ward, who has a hit movie and a new musical named in her honor, it also means she’s…
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New Musical ‘Be More Chill’ Is Like an Incel’s Answer to ‘Mean Girls’: REVIEW
If every high school dram-com is about fitting in, each one needs something to set it apart. Mean Girls has a riotous script full of sharply drawn characters; Dear Evan Hansen has an inspired score with a vivid emotional center. Be More Chill, a fren…
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New Go-Go’s Musical ‘Head Over Heels’ Is a Goddamn Queer Delight: REVIEW
A bride’s cockamamy paternity hunt was just crazy enough to make Mamma Mia! into a smash, launching a thousand jukebox copycats. Two decades later, The Go-Go’s are taking the opposite tack — toppling the patriarchy Head Over Heels in an queer fantasi…
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New Rock Opera from ‘Hedwig’ Creator, ‘This Ain’t No Disco’ Is Right About That: REVIEW
There’s no shortage of stories to tell about Studio 54. Ian Schrager will spill the whole teapot in a definitive doc out later this year. Miramax dished up a splashy and hollow celluloid treatment in Ryan Phillippe vehicle 54. And of course there are…
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Boys Will Be Boys in ‘Straight White Men’ Starring Armie Hammer and Josh Charles: REVIEW
Armie Hammer and Josh Charles are horsing around, swatting at each other and throwing shapes with abandon, as the crowd titters in delight. A frame around the Helen Hayes stage bears a plaque classifying the species on display: Straight White Men, wh…
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Jesse Tyler Ferguson Is a Gay Neo-Con in Vacant ‘Log Cabin’ Off-Broadway: REVIEW
When we first meet Log Cabin’s central foursome — two couples, one lesbian and one gay, diverse as a Benetton ad — it’s 2012 and they’re not fully, as the kids might say, “woke.” Jordan Harrison’s new play, which stars Jesse Tyler Ferguson and opened…
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Idina Menzel Opens In Off-Broadway’s ‘Skintight,’ a Daddy-Twink Romance Where ‘Hot Is Everything’: REVIEW
Calvin Klein’s much publicized but short-lived romance with an adult film star less than half his age has become ripped-from-the-tabloids fodder for a new play by Joshua Harmon. Skintight, a witty but muddled satire of cultural fixation on youth and…
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Love Between Black Men Faces Impossible Odds in ‘Sugar in Our Wounds’ and ‘Pass Over’: REVIEW
Two playwrights addressing the subjugation of Black bodies in America show how little has changed in more than a century, with bracing and powerful new plays that opened off-Broadway this week. The system of oppression that enslaves Black characters…
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The Grit and Heart of the 2018 Tony Award Winners Show Theatre Is More Relevant Than Ever: RECAP
Grit and heart were the big winners at last night’s Tony Awards — no more evident than when drama students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High wowed Radio City with a heart-wrenching performance of “Seasons of Love” from Rent. FULL WINNERS LIST: ‘Ange…
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Starry Broadway Revival of ‘The Boys in the Band’ Lends Gay History a High Sheen: REVIEW
The glass house on stage at the Booth Theatre seems to suggest the most shattering wounds are often self-inflicted, its plush red interior an assurance blood will be spilled. Director Joe Mantello’s slick 50th-anniversary revival of groundbreaking ga…
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