"Cats Who Take Direction"
by Amanda Hess[I don’t post much about movies—mostly because I don’t really know much about them as an art form—but since performing in film is somewhat analogous to performing on stage, the anecdotes...
View Article"Connoisseur of Grief"
by Carvell Wallace[On 4 October 2018, I posted an interview with playwright and screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney, originally published in American Theatre, as part of a pair of interviews I called...
View Article"Critic’s Notebook: The Art of Complaining"
by Pete Wells[Pete Wells is the restaurant reviewer for the New York Times. In his “Critic’s Notebook,” which appeared in the “Food” section of the Times on 6 February 2019, he makes a distinction...
View ArticleMelā! An Indian Fair (Washington, D.C., 1985)
[On 15 January, I published a post on the Natyasastra, the ancient Indian text on theater. Looking through my archive of theater reports, I found this one on an Indian folk festival presented in...
View ArticleSome Classics from the Archives
PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLDAbbey PlayersSeptember 1990Seeing the Abbey Players perform John Millington Synge’s Playboy of the Western World is akin to watching the Moscow Art Theatre do Chekhov or the...
View ArticleSome Musicals from rhe Archives
SOUTH PACIFICFichandler Stage, Arena Stage9 & 12 January 2003On New Year’s Day evening [2003], my mother and I went to Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage to see South Pacific. Now, I can’t be very...
View ArticleOn Directing Shakespeare
by Kirk Woodward[On 21 September 2009, I posted “Staging Shakespeare” on Rick On Theater; it discusses various suggestions and recommendations concerning directing William Shakespeare’s plays, based...
View Article'By the Way, Meet Vera Stark' (Signature Theatre Company)
It’s been a while since I’ve seen two productions of the same play—a contemporary one, I mean, of course, not a classic—particularly since I started posting reports on Rick On Theater. That is, until...
View Article'Boesman and Lena'
I’ve nominated Athol Fugard as one of the most interesting playwrights of the second half of the 20th century. I don’t think there is any such list, but there should be and Fugard should be high on...
View ArticleTen Years On
Today, 16 March 2019, is the tenth anniversary of Rick On Theater. I wrote the first post on this blog on Monday, 16 March 2009, an introduction to what I thought ROT would be like called “A New...
View ArticleThe Purim Play
[Back on 31 December, I published “Sight & Sound” by my friend Kirk Woodward. For those who don’t know the post, it’s about the productions of religious spectacles by the titular theater troupe, a...
View ArticleDispatches from Israel 16
by Helen Kaye[On 21 March, I posted an article on “The Purim Play” on Rick On Theater. One of the facts I learned while preparing the post is that the Purim play, which made its appearance in Europe...
View ArticleDispatches from Israel 17
by Helen Kaye[Earlier this week (26 March), I posted two of Helen Kaye’s reviews from the Jerusalem Post,Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance (1906) and :Paula Vogel’s Indecent (2017), both at the Cameri...
View Article'Kiss Me, Kate'
by Kirk Woodward[Longtime contributor toRick On Theater Kirk Woodward feels much the same way about the classic musicals as I do. I’ve copped to my inability to be critical of them many times on this...
View Article'The Taming of the Shrew' (Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, D.C., 2007)
[On 3 April, I posted a report by my friend Kirk Woodward on the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate. In my introduction to the post, I mentioned that I’d seen a...
View Article'The Cradle Will Rock' (Classic Stage Company)
After having seen the 2013 concert rendering of Marc Blitzstein’s agitprop “play in music,” The Cradle Will Rock, I wanted to see a “full production” of it. So when the Classic Stage Company announced...
View Article'Alien: The Play' (North Bergen High School, N. J.)
[I had planned to post a selection of published articles on two plays that attracted an unusual kind of attention that redounded to their benefit in terms of positive word of mouth. One is the...
View ArticleHopper and Turner at the National Gallery & Color Painting at the Whitney
[On Sunday afternoon, 21 April 2019, my friend Diana and I went over to the Whitney Museum of American Art in the West Village just to see whatever was on show there. We walked through a small exhibit...
View Article'Be More Chill': The Journey, Part 1
[On 18 April, I posted a collection of articles on Alien: The Play, a high school stage adaptation of the 1979 sci-fi movie, which caught the nation’s attention on social media. The attention ended up...
View Article'Be More Chill': The Journey, Part 2
[On 18 April, I posted a collection of articles on Alien: The Play, a high school stage adaptation of the 1979 sci-fi movie, which caught the nation’s attention on social media. The attention ended up...
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