Mark St. Germain's The God Committee, softly beating at A.D. Players, would fit comfortably on TV. It's made for that size. The play, about the doctors who decide which patient will get a heart transplant, is a bit like 12 Angry Men set at Chicago...

Controversy and cries of insensitivity have plagued Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, Richard Maltby, Jr.'s Miss Saigon since its London world premiere in 1989. The Broadway production opened in 1991 and ran ten years. It's a juggernaut, con...

Is there any opera in the rep sadder than Giacomo Puccini's achingly radiant Madama Butterfly (1904)? You could opt for his Boheme, perhaps, with its poor Parisians scrambling for rent and love, succumbing to consumption and despair. Verdi's Otell...

I'm not the first opera critic to trash a world premiere – look at the beating critics gave to perennials Butterfly, Traviata, Tannhauser – so in years to come this review may be cited as staid, stupid, and close-minded. Yet I think I'm still corr...

Dark. Dark. Dark. Impossible to believe, but Houston Grand Opera, in its tetrad-production of Don Giovanni with Royal Opera House, The Israeli Opera, and Gran Teatre del Liceu, has taken all the joy out of opera's most bad-ass character, Don Giova...

Ragtime (1996) is a serious musical. It has grand ideas, an epic sweep, an operatic production, a cinematic flow. Buoyed by a rich score, intelligent lyrics, and polished book, American history turns personal and deeply moving. This is musical the...