plays

A Tale of the Great Migration

by Bruce Chadwick

Blues for an Alabama Sky, a new play by Pearl Cleage, tells the story of a handful of those people. It is a deep, rich play in which their stories are carried out against the cultural backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance.

A Play About Historical Reenactors Grapples With American Identity

by Bruce Chadwick

Talene Monahon’s new play, How to Load a Musket, takes a deep, hard look at the re-enactors of two wars, the American Revolution and the Civil War.

How Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day Can Help Us Understand Our Political Moment

by Frank Palmeri

Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day is a rare bird—a revival (with a substantial re-write) that proves to be more timely and incisive than the original was.

1600s Verona: Romeo, Juliet, and A Romantic Tragedy for the Ages

by Bruce Chadwick

This Romeo and Juliet is a triumph.

A Chilling Play Grapples With How We Are All Connected to Slavery

by Bruce Chadwick

Can you shake off American history?

Playwright Stalks Caesar, Cleopatra, Ptolemy, the Roman Navy, Good Weather, Free Beer and Wacky History

by Bruce Chadwick

It is a lot of fun, but nowhere near the true story. Cleo and Caesar did have a son and there were not a lot of storks flying about the Nile in those days.

Gloria Steinem, the Women’s Movement and a Big Question

by Bruce Chadwick

Gloria, A Life, the new play by Emily Mann about women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem leaves a big, big question.

Romantic Angst in the 1950s Drought Stricken Midwest of The Rainmaker

by Bruce Chadwick

Would the old magic of the charlatan rainmaker still be there? Would the powerful grip of the old film still drown its audience in emotion?

All for One and One for All! The Three Musketeers Ride Again

by Bruce Chadwick

Bruce Chadwick encourages you to see The Three Musketeers: It is a sizzling tale of derring-do, adventure and a solid piece of French history.

London at War, 1941, and a New Alice in Wonderland

by Bruce Chadwick

Can you really spend a better evening than chasing a white rabbit trotting through the forest with a pocket watch in his hand? A review of Alice By Heart. 

Writer Amiri Baraka and the Endless Controversies

by Bruce Chadwick

A review of Looking for LeRoy, a play about one of the most controversial playwrights and poets in American history

The Price of Thomas Scott is Pretty High

by Bruce Chadwick

The drama is a sturdy look at the lives of women in that era and shows how thousands of them found work in millinery and other women’s’ shops, creating a whole new underclass of fashion workers.

Were These Enslaved Women Grand Medical Experiments or Guinea Pigs?

by Bruce Chadwick

Behind the Sheet is a great success on a number of levels, not just medical, and a four star historical hit.

Maestro Is Out of Tune

by Bruce Chadwick

This play is like a concert in which much of the music is missing. 

Husband vs. Wife, 1672 (Guess Who Wins?)

by Bruce Chadwick

The cast of Learned Ladies has hijacked the play, tossed it into the back of a horse drawn French carriage and roared off into the darkness with it.

The Great Northeast Blackout of 1965 Remembered Well

by Bruce Chadwick

The lives of the characters in the play all seem headed for bad endings and then, suddenly, in a breathless second, the northeast United States went completely dark.

How Schools Have Changed in Fifty Years

by Bruce Chadwick

If theater is suspension of disbelief, Grease is complete abandonment of it.

A Tempest Roars Off Bermuda, 1609

by Bruce Chadwick

It succeeds because the actors are superb.

Doctors Battle Angels of Death in Two Wars

by Bruce Chadwick

Sawbones and Diamond Eater are absorbing tales of medicine in wartime, a story that is not addressed very often in entertainment.

Motown: the Musical and Its ‘60s History Headed to Motown the City

by Bruce Chadwick

The play is a marvelous, foot stomping look at the history of the rock music business through the eyes of Gordy, who wrote the book of the play based on his autobiography.