Articles by: Michael Schwartz

Michael Schwartz is an instructor, director, dramaturg, and performer who lives in Springfield, PA. Mike earned his Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and his book, Broadway and Corporate Capitalism: The Rise of the Professional-Managerial Class 1900-1920, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2009. He has directed String of Pearls, Kimberly Akimbo, and Writer's Block for the Langhorne Players, and he has worked as a dramaturg for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Half and Half, and The Great American Trailer Park Musical for Montgomery Theater. He is very happy to have the opportunity to do more writing about the field he loves most.

The simple title of Robert W. Goldsby’s new book, Molière on Stage: What’s So Funny?, belies an ambitious project—partly an examination of Molière’s life and work, and partly an examination of how and why his plays remain funny after nearly 350 years. While conventional wisdom tells us that explaining anything [...]

The Arden Shakespeare Gild’s HENRY IV, PART 1 didn’t open under the best of circumstances. The company was obliged to use its rain location instead of its lovely outdoor venue. The Gild Hall, stuffy at the beginning of the evening, was oppressively hot by night’s end, and if the audience [...]

I can only imagine how much fun it must have been to be part of the Stagecrafters’ cast of TARTUFFE rehearsing this show. My greatest wish for the actors in this hysterical production is that they continue to have as much fun onstage as I did watching them. Even if [...]

Three years ago, Seth Rozin, InterAct’s Producing Artistic Director, first read Kara Lee Corthron’s script for ETCHED IN SKIN ON A SUNLIT NIGHT. According to the program notes, he “was immediately excited about the promise” of the play. While the promise is not fulfilled in InterAct’s ambitious and uneven production, [...]

Some plays become part of theatre history almost immediately. When ANGELS IN AMERICA first took New York by storm almost 20 years ago, Broadway audiences were treated to an epic that was simultaneously classic in its scope and utterly unique in its voice—as playwright Tony Kushner himself described the work [...]

“Watch me close.” Both characters—two brothers, portentously named Lincoln and Booth—give us those instructions during the course of Suzan Lori-Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play TOPDOG/UNDERDOG, and it’s good advice. Director Malika Oyetimein cleverly has both characters bend the fourth wall on that line, and in the space that is Walnut Street [...]

Emmanuelle Delpech, the director of Temple Repertory Theater’s production of Moliere’s TARTUFFE, makes some very interesting choices. Some of them worked for me, and others did not—plus there were a few during which, if I were the sort of person who texted during plays, I would probably have texted my [...]

What’s easy to forget, especially for us technologically-savvy denizens of the 21st century, is that theatre is magic. We’re lucky, therefore, that the Arden Shakespeare Gild’s production of The Tempest is around to remind us. It’s also easy to forget that The Tempest is all about magic, because Shakespeare’s audience [...]

If the right people meet in a comedy, then you’re home free. Whether it’s Groucho meeting Chico and Harpo, Gene Wilder meeting Zero Mostel in The Producers, or Kristen Wiig meeting Melissa McCarthy in the current Bridesmaids, then any other error in pacing, plot, or sentiment doesn’t much matter—as long [...]

It sounds simple enough—in the world of comedy, if someone assures you that something isn’t going to happen, it has to happen. And if someone tells you absolutely not to do something, you have to do it—except, of course, that’s also how tragedies work. Then there’s the rule of surprise—the [...]

You might think you’re in familiar territory when you first meet the Gordons, the family that’s wrangling over the titular issue in Horton Foote’s DIVIDING THE ESTATE. If you’re a theatre buff, you’ll hear echoes of Tennessee Williams in the way the characters address each other with a courtly formality [...]

The fun and the danger of mounting NOISES OFF, as the Narberth Community Theatre is now doing, can perhaps best be summed up by former New York Times drama critic Frank Rich. Rich referred to Michael Frayn’s farce as the funniest play written in his lifetime, and later referred to [...]

When Brick, Maggie the Cat, Big Daddy and Big Mama come to town, it’s always a cause for celebration. Theatregoers know they’re in for an evening of epic family squabbling and steamy sexuality delivered in Tennessee Williams’ singular combination of Southern-inflected poetry and vulgarity. It’s therefore fortunate that the Chapel [...]

Theatre people insist that they love Shakespeare, but they don’t seem to trust him very much—at least, not when it comes to his comedies. As a case in point, take the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre’s production of AS YOU LIKE IT, one of the Bard’s breeziest plays, full of the usual [...]

Every now and then you get really lucky, and you see something that reminds you why you go to the theatre in the first place. I got lucky Friday night—I got to see The Stagecrafters’ production of Lynn Nottage’s MUD, RIVER, STONE and it’s brilliant. Nottage has emerged as one [...]

If you’ve ever dreamed of being onstage when you don’t know your lines, have never rehearsed, and have never even heard of the play you’re supposed to be performing, then you’re familiar with the traditional “actor’s nightmare.” Celebration Theater in Lansdowne takes on Christopher Durang’s singularly twisted variation on every [...]

Sometimes you can’t put your finger on what a show is missing until the end. In the case of West Chester University’s production of Moliere’s THE MISANTHROPE, I figured it out at the curtain call. The student cast came downstage for their bows, and, somewhat incongruously, the Kinks’ “All Day [...]

The late Frederick Knott was a playwright who knew how to write a “boo!” play. He not only wrote WAIT UNTIL DARK, the Village Players of Hatboro’s current production, but he was also responsible for Dial M for Murder as well. It’s no coincidence that both successful plays also became [...]