The Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is the quintessential tale of love lost, nearly regained and then agonizingly lost again. When Eurydice dies on their wedding day, her musician lover Orpheus, "father of song", journeys down to Hades to rescue her. The man shreds so hard on the lyre they let him escort Eurydice back to the land of the living, with the caveat that she walk behind him the whole way – if......

While filing out of the Laura Pels Theatre after Patrick Marber’s Howard Katz, a woman of a certain age was heard exclaiming, “A tour de force!” Having brandished that over-ripe phrase myself on probably too many occasions, I was amazed to hear it applied to the play we’d just sat through. Had I been misusing it all this time? Was the expression actually French for “a total waste of time”? According to Dictionary.com, the......

(Photo by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times) Rachel Corrie was an American college student killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to block the demolition of Palestinian houses near a refugee camp in Gaza. (Israel officials claimed the demolitions were intended to stifle attacks along a road parallel to the Egyptian border.) Those who follow the New York theater world know all about the controversy that ignited earlier this year when New York Theatre......