Melissa Rose Bernardo

1 week ago | nystagereview.com | Melissa Rose Bernardo

We talk a lot about how to get young people to the theater. More targeted marketing, savvier social media, lower ticket prices: yes, yes, and a thousand times yes. Cast a popular young actor from a hit TV series—a tried and true tactic. But the best, and not always the easiest, way: Make it about them. For proof, look no further than Broadway’s Booth Theatre, and the young audience captivated by Kimberly Belflower’s whip-smart, bitingly funny John Proctor Is the Villain.

1 month ago | nystagereview.com | Melissa Rose Bernardo

If it’s spring in New York, it’s time for an Uncle Vanya. Last year’s was a relatively standard-issue Broadway production starring funnyman Steve Carell, with a new adaptation by Heidi Schreck. In 2023, it was an intimate, candlelit version in a private loft with an audience of only 40 each night; Tony-winning director and sometime actor David Cromer played the depressive title character.

1 month ago | nystagereview.com | Melissa Rose Bernardo

When you take your seat for Rebecca Frecknall’s fresh-from-London, Olivier Award–winning A Streetcar Named Desire at the Harvey Theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), you might be disheartened when you see the set—or, rather, the absence of a set. There are no “white frame” or “weathered gray” houses, “with rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables,” to quote Tennessee Williams’ famously detailed stage directions.

1 month ago | nystagereview.com | Melissa Rose Bernardo

The wonderful thing about Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks is that you get a chance to see works by up-and-coming writers such as Will Arbery, Clare Barron, Jen Silverman, and Heidi Schreck (her play What the Constitution Means to Me premiered there in 2017). The terrible thing about Summerworks is that each one lasts for about a week and a half. Thankfully, Clubbed Thumb has found a way to recapture some of that lightning-in-a-bottle feeling.

1 month ago | jckonline.com | Melissa Rose Bernardo |Rob Bates |Karen Dybis |Annie Watson

“Diamonds Are Forever,” sang Doja Cat in a musical tribute to 60 years of James Bond films at the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 2, at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. Apropos—since that was the overriding jewelry theme of the night. (Though while she was singing the Shirley Bassey classic, Doja was dripping in roughly 1 million Swarovski crystals.)Here, we break down a dozen of the most dazzling, diamond-filled looks of the night.