When Eater reported on the Elizabeth Street Tasting Room location closing last week and mentioned “a dinner theater event” as a negative prognostic sign, chef-owner Colin Alevras stepped up to the comments section to defend the event and its organizer: “Marlo produced a fantastic event,” wrote Alevras, while confirming the Tasting Room’s closing, “and I hope to be able to work with her again in the future.” Marlo is Eating Their Words creator and director......

THEATER: Gertrude Stein is regarded as an avant-garde intellectual whose adventurous prose has long overshadowed her plays – despite her Broadway hit Four Saints in Three Acts. (Who could forget?) A crack team of downtown experimental theater types are now hoisting six of Stein’s one-acts out of obscurity with a production in the East Village. The evening, irresistibly dubbed Steinese Takeout, boldly embraces Stein’s radicalism and runs with it. How radical are these plays? “How......

THEATER: Joe's Pub hosts SpeakEasy, a theatrical "event" written by Neil LaBute, Edwin Sanchez, Theresa Rebeck and many others. The performance will happen throughout the Joe's Pub space, "surrounding the spectator with the bizarre, the comic, the seductive, and the sublime. Neo-Vaudeville meets social satire in this giant play with environmental staging, original music, and compelling new writing." It's the launch of The Fire Dept. a new theater company; this show features Janeane Garafalo and......

As the summer season winds down over this Labor Day weekend, there's a few more big budget blockbusters vying for your attention. Nicolas Cage travels to a creepy island where a young girl has gone missing in Neil Labute's The Wicker Man. If you've ever seen the kitschy '70s original, you know this seems like an odd horror movie for a remake but maybe provocative Labute will make it more interesting than horrific. Playing a......

Pop culture is really paying attention to those of larger dimensions and girth lately. We have had reality TV's take on this with The Biggest Loser, and a Gothamist fave Rescue Me has had a featured storyline between a fireman dating a largish gal, to the disdain and ribbing by his crew. Now off- Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, we have that same actress (Ashlie Atkinson) in a similar role as one of the......

Gothamist is excited about the Tribeca Theater Festival, which is running now through the 31st. Yes, this is being put on by the same folks who bring us the Tribeca Film Festival. Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff are presenting, in association with the acclaimed Tribeca-based Off-Broadway theater company, Drama Dept. The two-week Festival will present a breadth of entertainment downtown, including a short play series, Stage On Screen programs, and theater panel......

Okay, here's the ultimate double feature for you this weekend: Frothy romantic comedy, Down with Love, and dark window into the human condition, The Shape of Things. A.O. Scott is upbeat about Down with Love and says, "Like Civil War enthusiasts in a Virginia cow pasture, Ms. Zellweger and Mr. McGregor don period costumes to re-enact a legendary skirmish in the battle of the sexes. David Edelstein is more dubious about The Shape of Things,......