Author Archives: burdreviews

            After writing plays for eight years, “The Glass Menagerie” was Tennessee Williams first successful play. Opening on Broadway in 1944, it won the New York drama Critics’ Circle Award the next year. Williams would go on to write “A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Night of the Iguana,” and anotherContinue reading “The Glass Menagerie at Arden Theatre Company”

The year is 1917. The place is Zurich, Switzerland. World War I is raging. Henry Carr, a British consular official is thinking about his time there when he encountered the communist revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin, the great modernist author, James Joyce, and Tristan Tzara, a founder and leader of the Dada movement, an anti-establishment artistic styleContinue reading “Travesties at Lantern Theater”

Neil Simon is clearly the most popular American playwright in the last half of the 20th century. With a career that began writing comedy sketches for tv in the ‘50’s, he turned to playwriting and created over 30 plays that ran on Broadway and almost as many screenplays, usually from adaptations from his plays. FullContinue reading “Prisoner of Second Avenue at Act II Playhouse”

Two Broadway legends, Ethel Merman and Mary Martin appeared together on television in 1953 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Ford Motor Corporation. Rivals for the great roles, they became friends and traveled and performed together for years. In “Together Off-Broadway:  Merman & Martin, Act II Playhouse has put together a 70 minute showContinue reading “Together Off-Broadway: Merman & Martin at Act II Playhouse”

In 1848, 23-year old Alexandre Dumas fils wrote a semi-autobiographical novel about his love affair with a courtesan who was suffering with tuberculosis, then called consumption. Four years later, he turned “Camille”  into such a successful play opening in Paris.  Giuseppe Verdi put it to music the next year. Thus was born the famed opera,Continue reading “Camille at Quintessence Theater”

This is the story of four African-American women who left the South after the failures of Reconstruction, and headed west. Three sisters and an older friend that they met in the all Black town of Nicodemus, Kansas, are trying to try to find a better life for themselves.  The American West was the hope ofContinue reading “Flyin’ West at Quintessence Theater”

“Fairview,” by Jackie Siblies Drury, currently at the Wilma Theater, is perhaps the most complex play I’ve seen on the stage in years. It begins in what seems to be a very normal African-American household, as they are about to celebrate the birthday of Grandma Suze. Family is coming in from out of town andContinue reading “Fairview at The Wilma Theater”

           Memoirs are a form of autobiography that go beyond just the story telling of what happened in a person’s life. They are filled with the writer’s reflection on the events, and they show us how the memoirist felt about his or her life. The most popular ones are usually about celebrities- show business, the politicalContinue reading “American Jade at Bucks County Playhouse”

          This musical comedy is the second longest Off-Broadway musical in history after “The Fantasticks.” “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” played for 12 years before closing in 2008. “Act II Playhouse has brought it to its intimate theater in Ambler after a delayed opening last week and I can see why the show wasContinue reading “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change at Act II Playhouse”

            The New York Times called it a a quirky comedy by an award-winning screenwriter about finding a true human connection in a digital-obsessed world in its review of the 2017 off-off Broadway production of “Today is My Birthday.”  It’s about a young woman who moves back home to Hawaii from New York where she’dContinue reading “Today is my Birthday at Theatre Exile”