Carlos Murillo’s Unreliable, Revelatory ‘Javier Plays’
More than a mere play collection, the author’s new anthology is a meta-meditation on identity, memory, and meaning.
Category Archives: Book Reviews
Richard Greenberg: Alone With His Thoughts
The playwright’s new nonfiction collection offers a grab bag of alternately brilliant and brittle asides.
The Very Model of a Modern Major Musical
The megahit of the moment, like many revolutionary popular works, has strong roots in musical theatre’s past.
Tummler Aches and Growing Pains
A pair of new books reveals how Joel Grey and the Yiddish theatre both drew on Jewish stage traditions of gravitas as well as schmaltz.
Two New Books Explore Life After Performance
Volumes by Judith Malina and Daniel Sacks wrestle with revolutionary truths—one via poetry, the other through theory.
Brecht From All Angles: Poet, Playwright, Theorist, Storyteller
Four books make fresh cases not only for the German playwright’s relevance but for his virtuosity as well.
Behind the Curtain: A Review of ‘Working in the Wings’
Elizabeth Osborne and Christine Woodworth compile an anthology on theatre labor and history that is ambitious yet scattered.
Theatre: Blockbuster Business or Art Form? 2 New Books Diverge
Michael Riedel and John Lahr both summarize decades of reporting on the business—and the art—of show.
New Books Evince Richard Eyre’s Erudition, Joan Littlewood’s Exuberance
They have little in common but their country of origin, but the former director of the National and the founder of Theatre Workshop are British leaders to be reckoned with.
What Price Goodness? Ten Thousand Things and the LAPD Have Kept Accounts
Two new books look at companies that serve audiences outside the institutional theatre’s cocoon of privilege.
