Search

They always say love comes along when you least expect it, when you're not looking for it, or both. If that's true, Ilana, the lovely but despondent protagonist of Rajiv Joseph's alternately wrenching and funny ''Animals Out of Paper,'' should meet her prince any minute now. Ilana (Kellie Overbey) is going through a divorce; her normally devoted elderly dog has run away; she has lost her apartment and moved into her appallingly messy art studio; and she hasn't answered her phone in two months. She lies around in her bathrobe all day, keeping herself alive on takeout Sichuan beef. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A momentous passage in American journalism strides stiffly across the stage of New York Theater Workshop in ''Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers,'' a fact-packed drama by Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Aarons, journalists with distinguished careers that have extended into academia and other realms. Actually, striding is overstating it. Mostly this dramatization of the 1971 showdown between the government and the press stands stock still, for obvious reasons. ''Top Secret'' was written for and first produced (in 1991) by L.A. Theater Works, a long-running radio-play series. Not much has been done by the director, John Rubinstein, or Mr. Cowan to rethink it for the stage. (Mr. Aarons died in 2004.) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author presents a review of the theatrical production "Hello, Dolly!" at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.

Journalists feeling beleaguered -- that is to say, journalists -- might find a wry glimmer of hope in the Michael Frayn play ''Alphabetical Order,'' which is having its New York premiere courtesy of the Keen Company. The play, which opened on Tuesday night at the Harold Clurman Theater on Theater Row, depicts the frantic antics at a withering daily newspaper in the British provinces. No, withering is not a cheering adjective to apply to a newspaper. (Or a fresh one, for that matter.) But this modest, tidy comedy dates from 1975. If newspapers have been shriveling since the distant predisco days, perhaps they can look forward to a twilight as long as that of the theater itself, which was declared to be dying long before the Internet was a twinkle in anybody's eye. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the play "The History of Valentyne and Orson," directed by Ralph Lee and performed by Ian Lassiter and Tom Marion at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in Morningside Heights, New York City through Sunday.

Laura, Laura, Laura. Any way you look at it, Laura Ingalls Wilder is the star of ''Little House on the Prairie, the Musical,'' now at the Paper Mill Playhouse. In the 1930s and '40s, the real Wilder wrote about her 19th-century childhood in the ''Little House'' books, which inspired the heartwarming NBC series. Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura for nine seasons, from 1974 to 1983, is the star attraction at the Paper Mill. And Kara Lindsay, who plays Laura in the musical, is the star performer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reviews the theatrical production "The Sound of Music," starring Elena Shaddow, Maya Fortgang, and Amanda Harris, performed at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New York until December 30, 2012.

THE drive from Times Square to the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., takes an hour, but the journey that Jeremy Jordan must complete during the ride is much longer. On Broadway, where Mr. Jordan will soon spend his days rehearsing for the new musical ''Bonnie & Clyde,'' he is one of the outlaw lovers who terrorized and seduced East Texas during the hungry years of the Depression. At Paper Mill he'll turn into Jack Kelly, the scruffy teenager who leads a lovable band of turn-of-the-20th-century newsboys in a strike on the Lower East Side in the Disney musical ''Newsies.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When the curtain goes up on ''Smokey Joe's Cafe'' at the Paper Mill Playhouse, four guys are standing casually around a jukebox. They begin singing ''Neighborhood'' (''Faded pictures in my scrapbook/Just thought I'd take one more look'') as the other five cast members stroll onstage and join in. If that setup is a playful reference to the term ''jukebox musical,'' no show has a greater right to use it. The show (full name: ''Smokey Joe's Cafe: The Songs of Leiber and Stoller''), which opened on Broadway in 1995, may have been the first of the genre. Critics didn't think much of the whole idea, but the show ran just short of five years and earned seven Tony Award nominations. The Paper Mill production exhibits all the strengths and weaknesses of the form. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reviews a theatrical play "Ripe," starring John Jiler, performed at the Theatre for the New City in Manhattan until November 11, 2012.

With its spring-loaded backflips, airborne spins, rambunctious kicks and balletic pivots, the athletic ensemble in ''Newsies the Musical,'' which opened on Sunday at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., puts up a persuasive struggle against corporate greed. But the irrepressible physicality of that scrappy band of ragamuffins is just part of what turns this canny stage transformation of Disney's 1992 big-screen misfire into a crowd pleaser. The story was inspired by the 1899 New York City newsboy strike. In the show's version of history, Joseph Pulitzer, followed by William Randolph Hearst and other newspaper publishers, raises the distribution price charged to delivery boys, hoping to increase profits and offset declining circulation. This prompts poor street kids across the boroughs to form an impromptu union and take action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- The whinny of the paper shredder into which a fate-changing letter is dispatched inspires startled laughter in the Williamstown Theater Festival's production of ''A Doll's House,'' starring Lily Rabe as the theater's most famous door slammer, Nora Helmer. This is possibly not a good sign, and yet the reaction isn't hard to explain. Even as the climactic moments of this revival of Henrik Ibsen's epoch-making play approach, it can be difficult to remember that we are meant to be in contemporary America, not 19th-century Norway, and that Ms. Rabe's soon-to-be-liberated Nora could be charting her journey toward self-realization with the assistance of an iPhone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ellen McLaughlin wants you to know that while you are reading your paper or computer screen, American soldiers in Iraq are on duty, very busy being soldiers. When you have dinner, they will still be there. And when you go back to work after the weekend. And she wants you to know that they have good reasons to exhibit some form of insanity. The Flux Theater Ensemble's fervent and valiant production of Ms. McLaughlin's sophisticated ''Ajax in Iraq'' makes its case in two ways. It preaches, calmly. And it tells parallel stories: of a tragic Trojan War figure and a brave young soldier in the Iraq war whose tragedy is just as ruinous. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The leading lady is hopeless. She's a bosomy redhead who can't remember her lines, and, rather than act, she just poses. The show's final number, ''Wide Open Spaces,'' is pedestrian, and the choreography is longer on energy than style. The Boston reviews are dreadful. Fortunately, this is ''Robbin' Hood!'' This comically imperfect show within a show is at the center of the Kander and Ebb musical ''Curtains,'' the Paper Mill Playhouse's current production. ''Curtains'' itself is, thank goodness, considerably better. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

'THE PAPER BAG PLAYERS WHOOP-DEE-DOO!' The stars currently performing at the Kaye Playhouse don't travel first class. They chug along in locomotives made from packing boxes, or glide in cardboard canoes, or ride in poster-board buses. But somehow they always reach their destinations: the hearts and minds of the youngest theatergoers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the finale of ''Wintuk'' the audience disappears in a nor'easter of crepe-paper snowflakes. Until then, though, the wonderment of Cirque du Soleil's fourth (and final) holiday visit to the cavernous Theater at Madison Square Garden occurs despite, not because of, the seasonal trappings. The title of this family-friendly show refers to the ice kingdom that ultimately greets a wide-eyed boy, his wider-eyed female companion and a singing shaman in search of snow. Once there, a milquetoast clown in a trash can clangs around before taking on two ice giants; a hoop-twirling temptress brings a dog back to life; and a pair of baby storks turn out to be dancing pickpockets. Or maybe the dog gets resurrected after that. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

THE director George C. Wolfe vividly remembers the day in 2004 when John Guare handed in his new play ''A Free Man of Color,'' his first epic work for the stage. The Public Theater had commissioned Mr. Guare to write a play about race and class in New Orleans around 1801, on the eve of the Louisiana Purchase. The play was to be modeled on 17th century English Restoration comedies, reflecting their interlocking, ribald plots that lampooned the social classes. The commission had been made in 2002, but Mr. Wolfe, then the head of the Public, hadn't heard from Mr. Guare in two years. ''Suddenly there's John with this thick, heavy stack of papers, 250 pages,'' Mr. Wolfe said of the script, which would have run five hours. ''John had been away reading book after book on the Louisiana Purchase, and every single, amazing fact he discovered was in that play. The scope was incredible, but it was enough for a man to get lost in.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Broadway musical ''American Idiot'' received a healthy shot in the arm last week as Billie Joe Armstrong, the frontman and lead guitarist for the rock band Green Day, performed in the devilish role of the heroin dealer St. Jimmy for a regular complement of eight performances. A rock opera set to more than 20 Green Day songs, ''American Idiot'' grossed $1,092,334 for the week, according to the producers - a significant improvement over the show's weekly average gross of $740,000 since opening on April 20 at the St. James Theater. The maximum possible gross for that week of performances would have been about $1.3 million. For his final performance on Sunday night, Mr. Armstrong also composed a brief number that he played - and which can be watched here or in the above video - after the curtain call and before the encore, ''Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).'' He pulled out a piece of paper, laid it by the lip of the stage, and began strumming out an ode about his musical theater debut: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

You can't resist the upbeat charms of ''Hairspray'' at Paper Mill Playhouse, where the cheerful musical about a big-haired girl with outsize dreams is being happily replicated on a somewhat smaller scale than the 2002 Broadway hit that ran for more than six years. Though the scenery is slimmed-down, this fast-paced crowd-pleaser packs every ounce of its original whirlwind appeal. Musicalized from John Waters's wacky 1988 movie, ''Hairspray'' possesses a mildly subversive edge to its story, spun around the spunky teenager Tracy Turnblad. She's a plus-size dynamo who nabs a slot on a local TV dance program, wins the hunky idol of her dreams, liberates her agoraphobic mom, Edna, from the house and inadvertently desegregates 1962 Baltimore in the process. The fact that first-frumpy-then-fabulous Edna is portrayed by a male actor (as she was by Divine in Mr. Waters's original and then by John Travolta in the 2007 movie) only increases the musical's loony charm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theatergoers with a nostalgic affection for ye olde 20th-century customs like letter writing and daily newspaper reading are the obvious audience for ''The Lady With All the Answers,'' a chatty solo play by David Rambo that gives us a chance to get up close and personal with Ann Landers, also known as Eppie Lederer, played with properly big hair and matching big style by Judith Ivey. For almost half a century Lederer dispensed friendly wisdom about love, marriage, sex and other vital issues, like the proper way to hang toilet-paper rolls, through her syndicated newspaper column. Lederer, who died in 2002 at 83, was not the first Ann Landers, as she freely confides in the play, but Lederer's tenure brought the column to a mass audience, and eventually author and pseudonym became virtually inseparable. At the height of her popularity Ann Landers was read by some 90 million people. Her column, along with that of her twin sister (Dear Abby), was a significant national forum for the discussion of manners and morals that readers found hard to broach with intimates, religious advisers or the neighbor over the fence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When do they do their homework? That's what I want to know about the three high school students who sign up for ''Speech and Debate,'' the club that provides the title for the slyly funny new play at TheaterWorks in Hartford. Solomon spends his time researching sex scandals and similarly outre topics for the school paper. Diwata swigs from warm bottles of wine cooler as she posts rambling extemporaneous songs and rants on her video blog. And Howie trolls gay chat rooms to e-flirt with older men and -- sure, why not? -- agree to meet them in the park at midnight. Schoolwork? Definitely at the bottom of the to-do lists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

''Haggadah (or the Passover Show),'' Witness Relocation's new production at La MaMa E.T.C., stands as a noisy rebuke to that too-familiar creature: the interminable family Seder. A whirl of speedy activity, with projections, music, dancing and short skits, ''Haggadah,'' directed and choreographed by the troupe's leader, Dan Safer, is theater for the short-attention-span, when-do-we-eat? crowd. Conceived collaboratively -- the program calls the eight performers co-creators and co-choreographers -- the show is more a series of riffs than a retelling of the Passover story, in which Moses leads the Jews out of captivity in Egypt. There's a hit-or-miss quality to those riffs, which run from silly (Moses, encouraged to have a jelly bean, opens a can and a paper snake pops out) to sober (a Holocaust-like story about a hut full of dead bodies). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Divas are fascinating creatures, if only because their aura of entitlement usually masks an insecure and tortured soul. It's this soul that Terence McNally is seeking to expose in his 1995 play, ''Master Class,'' revolving around the opera singer Maria Callas, which is currently receiving a highly respectable production at Paper Mill Playhouse. ''Master Class,'' though, has always been more of a performance piece than a well-made play; the licenses Mr. McNally takes with both the dramatic form and with the true nature of a master class itself are geared to keep the focus on the character he places center stage -- not so much for development as for introspection -- and inevitably on the actress playing her. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sooner or later it had to happen. The immortal hair bands of the 1980s finally receive their due in the brash jukebox musical ''Rock of Ages'' at New World Stages. It's a natural fit: the era's album-oriented radio -- this production has no time for the British synthesizer bands, R.E.M. or the great dance music of the period -- was closer to Broadway in its grandiosity than you might expect. But like much of the music that inspires it, ''Rock of Ages'' too often lacks a human pulse. The paper-thin story, played for laughs, is about saving the farm, here the club: the Sunset Strip's Bourbon Room, home of glamsters and metalheads and owned by Dennis (Adam Dannheisser, channeling too much Will Ferrell). While it's targeted for demolition by predatory developers (Paul Schoeffler and Wesley Taylor), Sherrie (Kelli Barrett), an aspiring actress from Kansas, meets the gentle busboy and aspiring musician Drew (the ''American Idol'' alumnus Constantine Maroulis, appealingly self-effacing). Complicating their entanglement is Stacee Jaxx, a preening rooster of a singer (Will Swenson of this summer's Central Park ''Hair,'' stealing the show with Axl Rose moves and Tim Curry overstatement). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The news, as Ballet Hispanico opened a two-week run at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday, was a premiere: Carlos Sierra Lopez's ''Destino Incierto (Carmen Trio).'' But the event was seeing the troupe's artistic director, Tina Ramirez, take the stage as she prepares to leave the company she founded in 1970. Ms. Ramirez is 80, if reports are to be believed. (She's not telling.) The age makes sense on paper, but not when faced with her commanding, elegant presence. Ms. Ramirez made a cameo as the Director in Graciela Daniele's 1990 work ''Stages,'' which follows a dancer from her beginnings as a young ballet student to her career's culmination as the regal head of a company that makes use of both her ballet and flamenco skills. The memory of Ms. Ramirez's hands wreathing about her head lingers long after the curtain descends. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I think I can confidently say I've now witnessed the most unprepossessing opening to a theater production it is possible to imagine. As the ushers retreated up the aisles at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater on Tuesday night, the audience's attention came to focus on the man who'd been wandering around onstage as we took our seats. What was he up to? He was rubbing the calluses off his feet, carefully collecting the skin shavings on a paper towel. The pedicure as entertainment -- yikes. The image became a metaphor, eventually, for the callused soul of the character onstage. ''Sunken Red,'' which kicked off the theatrical portion of the Next Wave Festival, is an adaptation of an autobiographical novel by the Dutch writer Jeroen Brouwers. He was interned in a prison camp in what is now Indonesia as a child, along with thousands of other Europeans rounded up when the Japanese took control of the area during World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

You can't say Cole Porter wasn't a genius. Some 60 years ago, he was handed a little backstage story about the cast of a Shakespearean musical playing in Baltimore: a ladies' man, his diva ex-wife, a bimbo who can't act and a young gambler who can never pay his taxi fare. Porter whipped up some music and some catchy lyrics, and the result was ''Kiss Me, Kate.'' The Paper Mill Playhouse's first-rate new production makes clear just why ''Kiss Me, Kate,'' which pays tribute to ''The Taming of the Shrew,'' won the first Tony Award, in 1949, for best musical. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The best way to learn dance history is in the theater. And the three-week Kirov Ballet season that opened at City Center on Tuesday night looks on paper like a major course in the history of ballet classicism. You could know nothing about dance and learn from this season much about the forms of ballet and how they have changed. Audiences perusing the lineups will assume the season's focus will be on choreography. It has started with the first of two Petipa anthologies and will include a Fokine, a Balanchine and a Forsythe program. The three late-19th-century ballets presented on opening night, all Kirov home repertory, are core texts of the ballet classicism perfected in St. Petersburg by Marius Petipa. Act III of ''Raymonda'' (1898) is a nonpareil demonstration of how Petipa could take folk dances as thematic material on which he then concocted exuberant classical variations. The Grand Pas from ''Paquita'' (1881) is a bright classicization of Spanish dance style that stops to include a series of solo variations. And in the Shades scene from ''La Bayadere'' (1877) an Orphic journey into the realm of the dead is shown as a Romantic vision but arranged in intensely and hierarchical classical-ballet terms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reviews the play "The Drawer Boy," by Michael Healey and performed by Louis Cancelmi, John Mahoney and Paul Vincent O'Connor at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey.