Preservationists and Greenwich Village community members are reporting that their efforts to stop NYU from demolishing the historic Provincetown Playhouse have paid off – to a certain extent. Andrew Berman, Executive Director of The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, tells us that NYU plans to preserve the facade and structural walls of the theater, but he says many issues remain unaddressed. Founded in 1918 by Eugene O’Neill and other trailblazers, the Provincetown Playhouse was......

It says a lot about Harvey Fierstein's distinctiveness that it's almost impossible to even say the name 'Harvey' without thinking of that endearingly gravelly voice. Whether you know him as Homer Simpson's assistant Karl, Robin Williams's brother in Mrs. Doubtfire, or Hairspray's Edna Turnblad, the Brooklyn-born actor's uninhibited, self-assured persona is thoroughly his own. Now the four-time Tony winner is back on Broadway with A Catered Affair, the musical adaptation of the 1956 film......

The 2008 Tony Award nominees were just announced, and looking over the list we’ve got to admit that it was a pretty good year for Broadway, at least in terms of quality. The phenomenal rock musical Passing Strange picked up seven nominations, including Best Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Lead Actor (Stew, pictured). Also competing in the Best Musical category are the tepidly received Cry-Baby, the harmless Xanadu, and the underdog Latino musical In......

Photo courtesy Carol Rosegg. Elmer Rice's 1923 play The Adding Machine is an expressionist parable about a miserable bean counter named Mr. Zero who, after twenty five years at the same desk, is replaced by the titular technological marvel. For Rice, the roar of the twenties was the sound of capitalism crushing workers' souls; his play would go onto inspire Tennessee Williams and presage Death of a Salesman. Now a musical adaptation of Rice's play,......

Photos © Joan Marcus. Elevator Repair Service [ERS] is rightly regarded as one of New York’s most innovative theater companies. Led by Artistic Director John Collins, who moonlights as a sound designer for The Wooster Group, the ensemble creates irreverent, idiosyncratic performances that wrest free from the straightjacket of naturalism with an absurd humor and colorful physicality. Their 2006 "workshop" production of Gatz was a high-water mark – performed over the course of seven hours......

The historic – but not landmarked – Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village could be the next building to make way for NYU’s ongoing expansion, which will devour six million square feet of space in New York in the next 25 years, if all goes according to plan. The theater is widely regarded as the birthplace of 'Off Broadway.' The local community board is open to NYU’s proposal (see renderings here), but some preservationists are trying......

Yesterday a Manhattan judge ruled that socialite Tricia Walsh-Smith, the scorned and furious wife of Philip Smith, could continue slandering her husband via YouTube as long as she stopped filming the series in the luxury apartment Smith owns. The 77-year-old president of the Shubert organization is in the midst of a nasty divorce proceeding against Walsh-Smith and, per their prenuptial agreement, is trying to evict her from the Park Avenue residence. Walsh-Smith, a British-born playwright......

If more NYU kids were like John Waters, the university’s downtown super-saturation would at least be a bit more colorful. In a recent interview with Details, Waters took a nostalgia trip back to his NYU days, when he, uh, did a lot of tripping: Back then you weren’t very interested in school. Who lasted at NYU longer, you or Woody Allen? I bet Woody went longer, because I think I was there from September to......

Photo courtesy Gerry Goodstein. How bad does a show have to be to become good? That’s the question posed by self-described “part-time conceptual artist” John Borek, who has recently revived the notorious 1983 Broadway flop Moose Murders in Rochester. The murder-mystery farce by Arthur Bicknell, which takes place one dark and stormy night at an isolated lodge, closed after 14 performances and widespread critical derision; the term “Moose Murders” has since become a Broadway euphemism......

Besides winning an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1984 for his portrayal of Antonio Salieri in Amadeus, F. Murray Abraham's long and distinguished career includes unforgettable performances in plays like Angels in America, Waiting for Godot, and the original Broadway production of Terrence McNally's The Ritz, to name just a few. You can currently catch the magnetic actor on stage in a trio of one act plays by Ethan Coen called Almost an......

Pictured left to right: Garrett Lombard, Denis Conway and Tadhg Murphy. Photo courtesy Pavel Antonov. In The Walworth Farce, Enda Walsh’s pitch black comedy currently in from Ireland at St. Ann’s Warehouse, all the world’s a stage in a squalid council flat, and all the men and women merely amateur players. Dinny (Denis Conway), a heavyset man with an air of menace, is the author of a deliriously farcical play that he and his two......

Several years ago writer/performer Christen Clifford, whose second child is due in November, wrote an essay called BabyLove that was named one of the “5 Most Shocking Personal Essays” in Nerve.com’s 10th Anniversary issue. The subsequent stage adaptation, in which Clifford stars, is a funny and unflinching look at love life after pregnancy, exploring everything from masturbating with an infant in earshot to postpartum sex and the "eroticism of breastfeeding." After performances at last year's......

Actress/playwright/trophy wife Tricia Walsh-Smith is in the midst of a nasty divorce from Philip Smith, her husband of ten years and president of the Shubert Organization, the largest theater owner on Broadway. And in what will hopefully be a new trend in marital strife, she’s documenting the emotional turbulence with a simultaneously funny and cringe-inducing YouTube masterpiece entitled One More Crazy Day in the Life of a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. SPOILER:“Oh, another thing:......

Photo: Diego Bresani You don’t have to wait until summer to catch sweet some rays out on Fire Island; playwright Charles Mee and a troupe of 108 actors and musicians have brought the beguiling little beach community to Tribeca, where they’ve transformed a cavernous space at the 3LD Art and Technology Center into a beach party of epic proportions. The wholly immersive experience begins as soon as you step inside the theater and realize that......

Photo © Gabe Evans Edward Albee, who turned 80 last month, has been enjoying a well-deserved center stage spotlight since last fall, when Second Stage produced a vital revival of The Zoo Story, which was coupled with a newly penned prelude called Homelife. A new play, Me, Myself and I, was well received in Princeton last January, while The Occupant, another new work, will premiere next month. Now two of Albee’s earliest exercises, the interconnected......

(L to R): Melissa Paladino (E-V), Elena Chang (Mikah Monoch), Maureen Sebastian (J’an Jah), and Temar Underwood (General Dan’h Madrin). Photo by Jim Baldassare Theater geeks, comic book nerds and Sci-Fi aficionados, alert! You’ve got one week left to blast into a hyperspace of dorky delights: Fight Girl Battle World, a lighthearted romp through your favorite genres by the boisterous Vampire Cowboys theater group. The photo above speaks volumes about the breezy production, which......

When asked why she wants to learn Japanese, a character in Kristen Kosmas’s play Hello Failure replies, “I want to chop away at the wilderness of my mind.” One suspects the playwright's reasons for developing her own distinctive theatrical language are the same; and, fortunately, her unique voice has a similar "clearing" effect on the audience. By the show’s end, you may find yourself walking out with a slightly less restless mind, though you may......

Joined by a small cadre of adventurous theatrical renegades, Michael Gardner has helped turned Williamsburg's Brick Theater into one of the city's most reliable sources for smart, funny, and surprising performance. Gardner is currently presenting a revival of his 1999 stage adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground, starring Brick co-founder Robert Honeywell as the book's rather tortured main character. Performed in the theater's backstage area, which has been transformed into a book-cluttered, candlelit......

Photographs by Carol Rosegg The above photograph from Paradise Park might lead you to believe the two hour production is a kinetic, exhilarating carnival ride. But just as the anticipation leading up to a day at Six Flags, New Jersey quickly dissipates into an irritable, misanthropic funk, an evening at Charles Mee’s Paradise Park leaves you strapped into a roller coaster that lurches forward only at rare intervals. This, of course, is what Paradise......

ART: In 2002 Hamburger Eyes xeroxed some pamphlets for what became the first of the crew's photography magazine. Since then "Hamburger Eyes has become an elegant yet underground periodical combining the documentary approach of National Geographic with the hit-‘em-hard sensibility of a late-night tagger." Tonight, in conjunction with the Spring 2008 release of their first book, The powerHouse Arena will display a selection of photographs (one of which is pictured) by the magazine's masterminds......

Times health writer Tara Parker-Pope got some unexpected thrills during last night’s performance of Gypsy, which stars Patti Lupone at Broadway’s St. James Theater: Toward the end of the show, as Ms. LuPone’s Mama Rose was about to launch into her show-stopping number, there was a crash in the balcony. A huge metal plate, about 30 inches in diameter and used to cover a diffuser, came crashing down from the ceiling. It hit a young......

MOVIE: After Marion Cotillard took home the gold for best actress in La Vie en Rose last Sunday, French cinema is sure to be all the rage. Today the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2008 series kicks off with a screening of Roman de gare (pictured). Buy tickets and get the schedule here. Friday// 6:30 and 9pm // Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts [70 Lincoln Center Plaza] // $12 (stand......

Another Will Ferrell sports flick will inflate this weekend, capping off a nationwide “Funny or Die” promotional tour that brought him to Radio City Music Hall Sunday night. The movie is Semi-Pro, which stars Ferrell as Jackie Moon, owner of the 1976 Flint Michigan Tropics, a team in the maverick ABA basketball league. To keep his career alive against all odds, Moon initiates off a series of increasingly desperate publicity stunts to attract fans –......

THEATER: Hemingway’s play The Fifth Column takes its now-familiar name from the Spanish Civil War, when General Emilio Mola, advancing on Madrid with four columns of troops, boasted of a hidden “fifth column” of fascist sympathizers waiting within the city. Hemingway, of course, was there for the action as a newspaper correspondent and dashed off the play while fascists bombarded his hotel. His rarely produced drama tells the “surprisingly funny story of the private......

Photos: AP/David Guttenfelder The New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s historic concert in North Korea concluded hours ago, marking the first performance by an American orchestra in the impoverished, totalitarian nation. The event also marked a first for much of the press, who are routinely denied access to North Korea and, once inside, usually find their movements tightly controlled. The Times has a stunning slideshow of photos snapped en route from the airport to the center of......

ART: This past Friday The NY Times dubbed the new MoMA exhibit Design and the Elastic Mind "exhilarating". Now opened, as of yesterday, we highly recommend stepping inside and delving into the world of flying cars, future software and 200 examples of "successful translation of disruptive innovation, examples based on ongoing research, as well as reflections on the future responsibilities of design." You can also check it all out online. 10:30am to 5:30pm //......

Photograph of Queens native Amy Ryan, nominated for best supporting actress for her role in Gone, Baby Gone At 8:30PM (following a half-hour red carpet special), the 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will begin, finally putting an end to the "There Will Be Oscar" or "Oscar Country for Old Men" type headlines. You can prep yourself with the Oscar nominees list as you watch (or avoid) red carpet coverage. You could read NY Times......

Photograph by Joe Holmes on Flickr Documenting the city in the snow apparently has its limits. Gowanus Lounge noticed this photograph of the Gowanus Canal, taken yesterday, by photoblogger Joe Holmes. Holmes wrote on his Flickr page it was "taken seconds before I was told that photography is prohibited on the 9th Street bridge because of 9-11 concerns." Oh, man, that should be a problem for the Toll Bros. marketing department. And what if......

EVENT: The Greenwich Village Antiquarian Book Sale is going on all weekend, so now is the time to go searching for that first edition you've been wanting on your bookshelf. You'll also find out of print books, maps and much more! Friday through Sunday // P.S. 3 [490 Hudson St] // Three-day pass $12 ART: Monday's interviewee, James Top, shows off his work tonight at the opening of his first solo NYC show, titled......

THEATER: Multi-talented and multi-gender performer Justin Bond – the beloved Tony-nominated Kiki from Kiki & Herb – vows to heat up the frigid East Village with Lustre, A Midwinter Trans-Fest. The cabaret show, which opened last night, promises to be a "fast and loose" night of music, dance and monologues for, by, or about transgender people, with a smattering of "neo-pagan revolutionary Appalachian-inspired folk songs." Bond's joined in the festivities by musical director Our......