Critics At Large

Detail from Fang Zengxian's Shai Fo Festival . (Shanghai Art Museum.) At the China Art Museum, Shanghai, Fang Zengxian’s Shai Fo Festiva...

The company of Ogunquit's Small Town . (Photo: Gary Ng.) Klara Zieglerova’s scenic design for the new John Mellencamp jukebox musical Sm...

(Three Rooms Press.) “The main thing is to be able to control your instrument, which, in the actor, is yourself. Once you’ve trained the ins...

Eric Graise, puppeteer Leah Hoffman, Ashlyn Maddox, and the company of The Snow Goose . (Photo: Diane Sobolewski.) In Paul Gallico’s famous ...

Jason Kravitz, Stephanie Gibson, and Dan DeLuca in The Producers . (Photo: Nile Scott Studios.) The inspired premise of Mel Brooks’s debut m...

Jeff Irving, Damien Atkins, and Travis Seetoo in Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense . (Photo: Michael Cooper.) P. G. Wodehouse gets the ...

Uproar in Heaven (1979), Collection of the Shanghai Chinese Painting Academy. The figures in Guan Liang’s paintings seem almost to have wan...

Julia Course and Martin Happer in Heartbreak House . (Photo: David Cooper.) The allegorical high comedy Heartbreak House is one of George B...

Sara Farb as Fanny Brice (understudied by Jade Repetta at the performance our critic attended) in Funny Girl. (Photo: David Cooper.) Since ...

André Sills and Krystin Pellerin in Othello . (Photo: David Hou.) The question up for grabs in any production of Shakespeare’s Othello is w...

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade . (Photo: Universal/Criterion Collection.) In a career devoted to giving audiences pleasure, Stanle...

Tony Yazbeck and Ben Jacoby in City of Angels . (Photo: Nile Scott Studios.) The 1989 City of Angels is one of the wittiest and most origin...

Portrait of Louisa May Alcott by Lance Austin Olsen. “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. Far away in the suns...

Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner in Les Liaisons Dangereuses . (Photo: Sarah Lee.) It’s not likely that many people read Choderlos de Laclos...

The company of The Balusters . (Photo: Jeremy Daniel.) David Lindsay-Abaire’s The Balusters , which enjoyed a twelve-week limited run as par...

“Art never saved the world. It cannot do so.” --Marcel Duchamp “Everyone is an artist.” --Joseph Beuys The 20th century. Oh how I do miss th...

The company of Goodspeed's Crazy for You . (Photo: Diane Sobolewski.) Crazy for You is the second of three Broadway musicals – so far –...

Ink-and-Brush painting by Zhang Shuqi. (Photo: Jason Wang.) In the glass-and-concrete halls of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou, Z...

Laurie Metcalf, a carton of organic milk, and Nathan Lane in Death of a Salesman . (Photo: Emilio Madrid.) When I heard director Joe Mantell...

Heather Ogden in the National Ballet of Canada's MADDADDAM . (Photo: Karolina Kuras.) In 2022, I walked out of Toronto’s Four Seasons Ce...