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Helen Shaw

Theater Critic
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@helen_e_shaw

Helen Shaw has written about theater in New York since 2005, and for New York since 2019.

  1. theater review
    WrestleMania Broke MeDispatches from two full nights of WrestleContent.
  2. vulture lists
    Even More Things to Stream While Broadway Is Shut DownDid you know that the SpongeBob musical is on Amazon Prime?
  3. coronavirus news
    In Drama School, the Spring Showcase Is Everything. Now What?Everything that agents and bookers might see has been canceled.
  4. theater
    Livestreaming and Labor: A Clash of Good Intentions at Red Bull TheaterA dispute with Actors’ Equity shuts down a virtual production.
  5. vulture recommends
    What to Stream While Broadway Is Shut DownSuggested substitutes for the shows you’re missing while theaters are dark.
  6. coronavirus news
    Even the $2 Trillion Rescue Isn’t Great for the ArtsA few crumbs for a significant part of the economy.
  7. appreciation
    ‘I Was Always Astounded by the Level of Constant Invention’: On Terrence McNallyThe playwright’s broad palette and essential humanity.
  8. yay!
    The New York Arts Scene Is Getting Some Much-Needed Financial ReliefA multi-foundation effort to save nonprofits has begun.
  9. coronavirus
    How One Theater Company Is Facing a Dark SpringA snapshot from downtown.
  10. the business of theater
    “There Is No ‘Surplus’ in Nonprofit”: How Off Broadway Is Coping With ClosureAt all but the largest downtown institutions, a few weeks’ closure can wipe out years of exhausting work.
  11. theater review
    If You’re Leaving the House, Head West to TumachoPlus, 72 Miles to Go …
  12. theater review
    Every Day a Little Death: Endlings and Unknown SoldierA pair of plays that (very differently) evoke the ultimate.
  13. theater review
    That’s Really Mom Up There: Suicide Forest and SKiNFoLKTwo plays involving very present mothers.
  14. theater review
    Girl From the North Country Has No Direction HomeOpportunity blown; so much told and not shown.
  15. theater review
    Lifeboats and Lifelines: Two Musicals Make the Case for Not Giving Up’We’re Gonna Die’ and ‘The Unsinkable Molly Brown.’
  16. theater review
    Lucas Hnath’s Dana H. Is the Real ThingRipped not from the headlines but straight from life.
  17. theater review
    Men to Watch in Cambodian Rock Band, Blues for an Alabama Sky, and The HeadlandsPerformers who hold your attention, even with uneven material.
  18. theater review
    Horror Stories of Womanhood: Dracula, Frankenstein, and Anatomy of a SuicideThe horrors.
  19. theater review
    In the New West Side Story, When You’re Onstage You’re Onscreen All the WayFrom your first tracking shot to your last camera play.
  20. theater review
    Why We Gather: Three Shows As Three MeetingsWhere We Stand, Darling Grenadine, and Fragments, Lists & Lacunae all bring the audience into the production.
  21. performance
    Put a Mustache on It: Working Out the Genre-Bending in NateTwo critics try to get at the core of Natalie Palamides’s comedy-theater-clowning-drag hybrid.
  22. theater review
    Ruth Negga’s Hamlet Is a Sweet Prince—But It’s Not a Good NightAlas.
  23. theater review
    House Plant Brightens Up the RoomA light surreal comedy starring Ugo Chukwu at NYTW.
  24. theater review
    Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice Is Odd & Sexless & Flat & TiredAnd generally not what we want from the movie or its musical adaptation.
  25. theater review
    Zora Howard’s Stew Remixes the PotboilerA play that takes place mostly in the kitchen.
  26. theater review
    How Do You Solve a Problem Like Medea?Simon Stone rewrites Euripides, and Bobby Cannavale and Rose Byrne star.
  27. theater review
    Scary Stuff: Paris and The Woman in BlackOn a proscenium at the Atlantic, and in the McKittrick Hotel.
  28. theater review
    The Sparkle and Glow of Grand HorizonsStarring national treasures Jane Alexander and James Cromwell, not to mention Michael Urie’s contortionist reactions.
  29. theater review
    A Soldier’s Play Is a Procedural With BiteDavid Alan Grier’s performance “has size and precision, monstrosity and humanity.”
  30. theater review
    A Timon of Athens for the Age of Peter Thiel“We know what the wealthy do when they feel cheated and insulted.”
  31. theater reviews
    Just Talk But Sometimes More: The Conversationalists and The Truth Has ChangedThe pleasures, and pitfalls, of pure narration theater.
  32. theater review
    My Name Is Lucy Barton Comes to Broadway As a Glum, Gray DudThis adaptation of Elizabeth Strout’s novel is a dull lesson in the difference between what’s needed on the page and on the stage.
  33. theater review
    What’s Over the Top at the Under the Radar Festival?Plus Richard Maxwell’s Queens Row, at the Kitchen.
  34. appreciations
    Alice Childress Didn’t Defang Her Plays, and Producers Said NoAny list of great American playwrights is incomplete without her — she saw deep into history, into the theater, into blackness, into whiteness.
  35. what were the 2010s?
    The Decade in Theater: Six Closing ThoughtsSpidey and Hamilton, Gatz and Is This a Room and Slave Play, and so much more.
  36. best of 2019
    The Best Theater of 2019Avant-garde weirdness, a cozy ideal revival, and a spectacular musical about race and gay sex.
  37. theater review
    A New Order for Sing Street, Now Adapted for the StageI just can’t get enough.
  38. what were the 2010s?
    The Book of Mormon and Hamilton Already Feel Like They’re From Another TimeA fresh look at the decade’s biggest Broadway smashes.
  39. theater review
    I Took Kids to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. They Saw Things I Missed.I borrowed two children for the afternoon and watched the show through their eyes as well as my own.
  40. theater review
    At the Armory, Judgment Day Shows Its Cast No MercyAnd in Brooklyn, JACK lands in a congenial new space.
  41. theater review
    The Thin Place Is a Horror Drama That You Think You’ll Forget, Then Won’tAt the edge between reality and something else.
  42. theater review
    Harry Connick Jr. Brings the Tick-Tick-Tick of Cole Porter Back to BroadwayAlso some awkward theatrics—but the core of the evening is the de-lovely band and that voice.
  43. theater review
    Theater Review: Greater Clements, a Small-Town Drama Without the TownDown into the midwestern darkness, at a little spot that’s about to disappear from the map.
  44. theater review
    Theater Review: Daniel Kitson Keeps Only Things That Spark No Joy WhatsoeverA monologuist who can’t stop interrogating himself and us.
  45. theater review
    Theater Review: Jagged Little Pill Is Missing the Essence of AlanisWasn’t she iconic?
  46. theater reviews
    The Wild Invention of Fefu and Her Friends and A Bright Room Called DayFornés and Kushner, wild inventors both.
  47. theater reviews
    The Understated Charms of The Underlying Chris, and a High-Decibel CrucibleWill Eno, produced quietly, and Arthur Miller, not.
  48. theater review
    Theater Review: A Christmas Carol Gets a Cute Scrooge With Daddy IssuesIs this the Ghost of Broadway Future?
  49. theater review
    What Makes the Man: Édouard Louis’s Autobiographies, OnstageHistory of Violence at St. Ann’s and The End of Eddy at BAM.
  50. theater review
    Tragedy Plus Comedy Plus Melodrama in The InheritanceThree hours that are impossibly absorbing, and then three and a half more.
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