AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

Back Stage

Rooms: A Rock Romance reviewed by Andy Propst
This familiar tale is made plausible, and curiously pleasant, by the performers, who uncover surprising depths in these Scottish youths

New York Daily News

'Rock Romance' makes a fine duet
Can a quirky female lyricist and a reclusive rocker who can wrap his guitar around a melody make music - and find love - in the big city?...

New York Post

It's Scot fun to be in love
It's hard enough to pull off a rock musical, let alone an intimate two-hander. Add an accent - and not just any accent: a Glasgow brogue - and you have a daunting task on your hands. And yet Paul Scott Goodman's "ROOMS a rock romance" turns out to be an appealing surprise. Much of the credit goes to Leslie Kritzer and Doug...

Associated Press

Youthful romance musically flourishes in 'Rooms'
It's a sound formula for fun musical theater -- rock 'n' roll with an edge, youthful romance and fresh comedy performed with an exaggerated Scottish brogue.

Variety

Review: Rooms: A Rock Romance
Off Broadway has a potential hit in "Rooms," Paul Scott Goodman's "rock romance." Goodman's varied and impressive score combines with Scott Schwartz's canny staging and strong performances from Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger to offset a certain inevitability in the plot.

TheaterMania

Review: ROOMS: A Rock Romance
This two-handed tuner quickly turns into a mirthless melodrama

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Rooms
Any room - or theater - is more interesting when Leslie Kritzer is in it. With a stunning belt voice, the crack timing of a Golden Age comedienne, and a naked connection to her soul, she’s one of the few young

nytheatre.com

Review: Rooms: A Rock Romance

CurtainUp

Review: Rooms
A disappointing two-hander about a reclusive musician, and the far more ambitious womanwho coaxes him out of his room for a brief trip to the top of punk rock stardom

 

Back Stage

The Good Negro reviewed by Andy Propst [critic'spick]
There's almost a Shakespearean quality to Tracey Scott Wilson's The Good Negro, an examination of behind-the-scenes events during the civil rights movement in Alabama circa 1963.

New York Times

Showing Human Side of ’60s Fight for Freedom
“The Good Negro,” a skillful new historical drama by Tracey Scott Wilson, considers a pivotal passage in the civil rights movement.

New York Daily News

Finding fault lines in '60s civil rights battles
Drawing on historical events and figures of the tumultuous 1960s, “The Good Negro” is a good play getting an equally fine production at the Public Theater.

Associated Press

'Good Negro' examines '60s civil rights movement
Monumental themes encased in historical drama are not easy to pull off. Yet Tracey Scott Wilson manages to avoid sermonizing pitfalls in "The Good Negro," her engrossing, highly theatrical take on the burgeoning civil rights movement in Birmingham, Ala., in the early 1960s.

Bloomberg.com

`Good Negro' Turns Adultery, Race Riots Into Harrowing Drama: John Simon
Political drama is a rather rare phenomenon in U.S. theater. All the more praise to Tracey Scott Wilson’s “The Good Negro,” at New York’s Public Theater, for bringing to vibrant life the black movement in 1962 Birmingham, Alabama, as it takes a giant step toward desegregation.

TheaterMania

Review: The Good Negro
Tracey Scott Wilson's play about the human flaws of 1960s Civil Rights leaders is at times maddeningly simplistic.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: The Good Negro
With her absorbing new play The Good Negro, which just opened at The Public Theater, Tracey Scott Wilson wants it known that the greatest men aren’t always great, or even good, people. . . .

nytheatre.com

Review: The Good Negro
Our reviewer Martin Denton thinks this might be the most important play of the season...

CurtainUp

Review: The Good Negro
Tracey Scott Wilson doesn't just lean on actual events but knows how to transform them into a ripping good behind the headlines story with all-around dramatic flair

'kül

The Good Negro
Even in segregated Alabama, 1962, things were hardly black and white, and that's what makes Tracey Scott Wilson's meaty new play, The Good Negro, a Technicolor triumph. This radiance of nuance represents the truth: ...

 

Updates for March 17, 2009:

The Guardian

Blithe Spirit, Shubert Theatre, New York
With a lavish set and excerpts from Coward songs between acts, this is as good a cure for grimness as it ever was, says Emma Brockes

Time Out New York

Review: Blithe Spirit
Angela Lansbury heads up a hauntingly fun new revival of the Noël Coward comedy classic.

Hartford Courant

Lansbury, Ebersole Help Make 'Blithe Spirit' Soar
Hail to thee, "Blithe Spirit." The revival of Noël Coward's 1941 ghost story opened Sunday in a transcendent revival at the Shubert Theatre in New York

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AmericanTheaterWeb

Review - Blithe Spirit
Breezy Comedy for the Spring

New York Times

The Medium as the Messenger
This genial but bumpy new revival of Noël Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” stars Angela Lansbury in her juiciest role in years.

New York Daily News

Lansbury moves us, not 'Spirit'
Playing an eccentric psychic medium who stirs up ghostly trouble in “Blithe Spirit,” Angela Lansbury may be fidgety and frazzled at times, but she’s the spark in the new production of Noel Coward’s 1941 comedy, now open at the Shubert.

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of Blithe Spirit
“Blithe Spirit” is advertised outside, but this Broadway revival of Noel Coward’s 1941 screwball comedy may as well call itself “Angela Lansbury Love Fest.”

Newsday

Review: Angela Lansbury takes "Blithe Spirit" to heights
Broadway audiences have been known to interrupt a production to applaud a famous actor's entrance. On occasion, they clap after a fancy exit. But I can't recall a time when an audience has burst into applause, over and over, just about every time the star comes onto the stage or walks off.

New York Post

'Spirit' willing, flash weak
At this point in her career, Angela Lansbury's approach to the stage is that of a jazz virtuoso: She may not always stick to the written score, but somehow the music comes out just fine. Like her character ..

ny1

NY1 Theater Review: "Blithe Spirit"
...the champagne-light supernatural farce by Noel Coward, and it should continue to haunt the Shubert for a good long time.

The New Yorker

“33 Variations,” “Blithe Spirit.” by John Lahr

Bergen Record

Theater review: "Blithe Spirit"
If the revival of "Blithe Spirit" were a dessert, it would be an unrisen soufflé.

Associated Press

Lansbury and Company Wittily Spin 'Blithe Spirit'
Light and airy requires heavy lifting -- theatrically speaking

Bloomberg.com

Angela Lansbury's Comic Psychic Lights Up Fervent `Spirit': John Simon
When a scintillating comedy, masterly direction and superior performances come together, what have you got? A rip-roaring revival of Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” that lights up Broadway’s Shubert Theatre.

Variety

Review: Blithe Spirit
While the dry martinis flow freely among hosts and guests alike in "Blithe Spirit," those libations do little to loosen up Michael Blakemore's classy but stiff Broadway revival.

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: Blithe Spirit
Bottom Line: This revival of Coward's 1941 comedy proves that the playwright still has the "talent to amuse."

Back Stage

Blithe Spirit reviewed by David Sheward [critic's pick]
It's clear that audiences filling the Shubert Theatre have not come principally to see Blithe Spirit, Noël Coward's classic comedy of whimsy and the occult.

TheaterMania

Review: Blithe Spirit
Angela Lansbury gives a side-splitting performance as Madame Arcati in Michael Blakemore's near-perfect revival of Noel Coward's world-class comedy.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Blithe Spirit
Madame Arcati, the motley clairvoyant around whom the most otherworldly aspects of Noël Coward’s heavenly comedy Blithe Spirit revolve, is by her nature not a headline grabber. She might be good for a half-page profile in an alt-weekly, or as a one-liner in the “fashion don’ts” ...

CurtainUp

Review: Blithe Spirit
With New Yorkers being blitzed with bad news, the producers of the latest revival of Noel Coward's wartime prompted ghost story may well be right in thinking that it will once again prove to be a perfect escape from grim reality