Arts

The Playhouse production of Sam Shepard's 1983 work is well-staged, but the piece itself has lost much of its original ability to shock.

The bizarre storyline is paper-thin, but the performances shine in this tuneful throwback to the days when nightclubs really swung.

Yoshiki has used emotional trauma as the raw material to build the rest of his life and art. It also serves as the centerpiece of his Classical Special show, which, like his concerts with X Japan, has a resonant energy that remains with one long after the program has ended.

The first musical from this fabulously inventive puppeteer ensemble may be the troupe's most charming production yet. Brightly gripping, and written and directed in a classic fabulist style, it's replete with innovative marvels of illusion.

Blanchett's Anna is as complex a lost soul as Broadway is likely to host this season, her yellow-hot energy as vital and clamorous when she's fuming in silence at the dinner table as when she's swooping in desperate high spirits from friend to friend in Act I. Roxburgh, in the most central role, is just as compelling.

A collection of new interviews with key figures of 1990s dance music, James Arena's new book, 'Stars of 90s Dance Pop' is well-rounded and entertaining.

If you have some tolerance for the avant-garde and the unexplained, 'Holden' will be well worth your time. The actors and creative team of George & Co. have put their heart, soul, and blood into a powerful imaginative portrait of the psyche of one of literature's most fascinating characters, J.D. Salinger.

Refreshingly, the show doesn't focus on the tragic side of Édith Piaf's biography. It's nice to be reminded that her career was a deserved triumph, that sometimes popular audiences recognize greatness while the great one is alive to appreciate it.

Falling in love is euphoria and terror. There is no other way to achieve its beauty and hope.

The ongoing saga of All Romance E-Books disturbing business practices.