plays

• 
• 2/20/20
  

  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.

• 
• 1/19/20
  

  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.

• 
• 12/1/2019
  

  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.

• 
• 10/24/19
  

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

  by Bruce Chadwick

  This Romeo and Juliet is a triumph.

• 
• 10/9/19
  

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

  by Bruce Chadwick

  Can you shake off American history?

• 
• 9/26/19
  

  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.

• 
• 9/17/19
  

  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.

• 
• 8/20/19
  

  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?

• 
• 6/18/19
  

  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.

• 
• 3/19/19
  

  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. 

• 
• 3/4/19
  

  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

• 
• 2/24/19
  

  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.

• 
• 1/29/19
  

  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.

• 
• 1/15/19
  

  Maestro Is Out of Tune

  by Bruce Chadwick

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

• 
• 6-27-14
  

  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.

• 
• 6-20-14
  

  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.

• 
• 6-6-14
  

  How Schools Have Changed in Fifty Years

  by Bruce Chadwick

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

• 
• 6-6-14
  

  A Tempest Roars Off Bermuda, 1609

  by Bruce Chadwick

  It succeeds because the actors are superb.

• 
• 5-30-14
  

  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.

• 
• 5-23-14
  

  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.