Review Roundup: Lily Allen Brings WEST END GIRL Tour to North America

www.broadwayworld.com: Lily Allen is now on the road with her concert tour for West End Girl, her critically acclaimed album that arrived at the end of last year. The live show sees the performer present an elaborate extravaganza that taps into Allen's theatricality and that of her album, which has a definite narrative.

'Cats: The Jellicle Ball' review roundup

www.goldderby.com: Jellicle cats come out tonight, because you're definitely shining bright. The reviews are in for the Broadway version of the 2024 off-Broadway smash Cats: The Jelliclle Ball, and this new take on Andrew Lloyd Webber's vintage '80s musical is getting all the raves that the notorious Taylor Swift-enhanced feature film from a few years back definitely didn't.

Review: Powerful Drama 'Paradox of Education' Teaches Hard Lessons of Racism on Campus

onstagepittsburgh.com: Being made to feel “other” is no way to go through life, no less, to make it through four years of college. In Ty Greenwood’s powerful new drama, Paradox of Education, a group of Black students discover that scholarships to a PWI — predominantly white institutions — come with student debt, living up to academic expectations and piles of obligations, along with shouldering racially-charged, passive-aggressive encounters and outright hostility.

Review Roundup: Teatro La Plaza's HAMLET Off-Broadway

www.broadwayworld.com: Theatre For a New Audience is currently presenting Teatro La Plaza's Hamlet through April 4. In this adaptation, Peruvian director Chela De Ferrari intertwines the text of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with the lived experiences of a young ensemble of eight actors with Down syndrome.

Water for Elephants: A Feast for the Senses

onstagepittsburgh.com: Water for Elephants is a no-doubt true showstopper, and I find it hard to select a single aspect to praise because there are so many stunners throughout the performance. First premiered in the Alliance Theatre (Atlanta) in 2023, then as a Broadway musical in 2024, it has been on its national tour since 2025 and is now performing in Pittsburgh as part of the Cultural Trust’s PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh series.

Guest Review: ‘10 Out of 12': Immersive Theater Done Right

onstagepittsburgh.com: Theater is an art form that continues to expand humanity’s understanding of reality through many different formats. We’ve seen the changes that theater has gone through and continues to do so, adapting to encapsulate the reality of modern times and tell stories that grab attention and bring us, the audience, into the world. Quantum Theatre’s production of 10 Out of 12 does exactly this.

Review: Quantum Theatre's '10 Out of 12' Experience Is an Unconventional Love Letter to Theatermakers

onstagepittsburgh.com: Tech rehearsal in theater is the crew’s time to sync to a show’s rhythms and iron out the wrinkles that develop with hundreds of light and sound cues, entrances and exits, performers hitting their marks, wardrobe and set changes ,,, it’s where it all comes together. Or it doesn’t. No matter. The show must go on.

Out Here gives a fresh musical spin to the family drama

Chicago Reader: In Out Here, a new musical by Leslie Buxbaum and Erin McKeown, which has its world premiere at Court Theatre this month, the characters wrestle with what it means to be open and spontaneous without losing everything they thought they wanted. Dawn thinks she wants a divorce, and she reconnects with her college sweetheart, Robin, who she broke up with when she thought it would be too hard to build a family in a same-sex relationship. Brian starts a new relationship with Gina. And Cleo and Jett, Robin’s nonbinary child, try to figure out what it all means for them as their parents restart their romantic lives in midlife.

To speak out or not to speak out?: Claudio Tolcachir directs “Mejor no decirlo/You Shouldn’t Have Said So” at Barcelona’s Teatre Goya

The Theatre Times: What does it mean to be honest with your partner? This is the premise that governs Salomé Lelouch’s entertaining two-hander, Mejor no decirlo/You Shouldn’t Have Said So which presents a couple in their sixties (or possibly early seventies), played by María Barranco and Imanol Arias; it is his second marriage, less is known about her past, but both have a tacit understanding of when to keep quiet and when to speak out.

“Infinite Life” at barebones productions

The Pittsburgh Tatler: Count on playwright Annie Baker to quietly poke and prod at some of the most tender areas of your psyche. Her hypernaturalistic style puts mundane conversation and everyday being under a microscope, subjects them to rigorous examination and dissection, and then renders them in such exquisite detail that they become strange and mysterious in their familiarity.

Best show to laugh until you cry

Chicago Reader: The first time I saw Second City’s Black Excellence Comedy Revue, I cried real tears from laughing so hard. The 2024 title, Black by Popular Demand, was the second year Chicago’s most acclaimed comedy institution had this very Black show, and my best friend, WBEZ host Sasha-Ann Simons, wanted to cover it for her show. I was just tagging along.

Pain and Endurance in barebones productions’ Infinite Life

onstagepittsburgh.com: Playwright Ann Baker‘s Infinite Life depicts a group of five women and a man on a wellness retreat at a fasting facility. They sunbathe on lawn chairs, with only a parking lot behind a bakery in their line of sight.

In a Screen-Dazzled World, a Theater Critic Has the Antidote

The New York Times: It’s an odd time to be a theater critic. There are fewer of us writing for institutions than ever before — just a handful now across the country. In February, less than a month after I joined The Times, the Washington Post laid off almost every arts writer they had, capping a period of brutal attrition.

Review Roundup: Ethan Slater Leads MARCEL ON THE TRAIN at Classic Stage Company

www.broadwayworld.com: The world premiere of Marcel on the Train, co-written by Marshall Pailet and Tony Award nominee Ethan Slater, and directed by Pailet, officially opened on Sunday, February 22 at Classic Stage Company. Read the reviews here!

Arcadia review – love, gardening and Euclidian geometry collide in Tom Stoppard’s cosmic masterpiece

Stage | The Guardian: When Tom Stoppard was asked what this play was about, just as it streaked its meteoric path from London to New York in the 1990s, he called it a drama of romance, mathematics, landscape gardening and Byron. It doesn’t quite cover it. Often regarded as his finest, Arcadia is about life, the universe and everything, to borrow a phrase.

Review Roundup: Critics Sound Off On CHEZ JOEY at Arena Stage

www.broadwayworld.com: Chez Joey is now running at Arena Stage. With fresh arrangements of the legendary catalog of Great American Songbook duo Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, a new book by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King), choreography by Tony winner Savion Glover (Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk), and co-direction by actor, director, and producer Tony Goldwyn (ABC’s Scandal) and Glover - the production runs through March 15th, 2026.

Fringe: And Her Children. Agitprop for Gun Control

New York Theater: Anna Fierling, the spokesperson for the National Rifle Association who tells her story in “And Her Children,” is a fictional character clearly inspired by former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch, but merged with the main character (not coincidentally named Anna Fierling too) of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children.”

Review: Prime Stage Shines a Spotlight on the 'Freedom House' Hidden Figures

onstagepittsburgh.com: The pioneering Freedom House Ambulance Service has garnered much-deserved attention of late, thanks to The Pitt, the HBO show that shines a spotlight on all things Pittsburgh, following the WQED documentary Freedom House Ambulance: The FIRST Responders and the 2022 book American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics, by Kevin Hazzard.

Martin Crimp’s Version Of "The Seagull" Makes It To The German Stage

The Theatre Times: Many, especially prestigious, new productions of Chekhov’s The Seagull in the UK and USA commission new translations or versions of the play. For example, in 1985, for his West End production, director Charles Sturridge presented the translation by himself and Tania Alexander. The cast included Vanessa Redgrave as Arkadina, her daughter Natasha Richardson as Nina, Jonathan Pryce as Trigorin and John Lynch as Konstantin. Peter Hall used a new version by Tom Stoppard for his 1997 production at the Old Vic, starring Felicity Kendal as Arkadina, Victoria Hamilton as Nina, Michael Pennington as Trigorin and Dominic West as Konstantin. The National Theatre production of 2006, directed by Katie Mitchell, with Juliet Stevenson as Arkadina, Hattie Morahan as Nina, Mark Bazeley as Trigorin and Ben Whishaw as Konstantin, used a version by Martin Crimp, usually referred to as “paired-down”.

I Do review – immersive hotel drama as wonderful as a real wedding day

Theatre | The Guardian: When isn’t there big family drama in the buildup to a wedding? The nerves, the tantrums – sometimes even charges of “inappropriate” first dances. Isn’t it all part and parcel of the apparently perfect day?