If the pretentious tricks illusions of Will Arnett's Arrested Development character GOB ever made you guffaw, you'll be rolling in the aisles in the Elephant Room, a wickedly funny three-man show currently levitating audiences at St. Ann's Warehouse—or "Stan's Warehouse," as one of the play's characters calls it. Unlike GOB, the slightly creepy magicians in Elephant Room successfully execute some seriously impressive illusions. But they do it while also skewering the geeky hermetic subculture of guys obsessed with magic (and '80s hair metal and the Dalai Lama). more ›

Two of the most adventurous creators of contemporary theater, The Wooster Group and New York City Players, have come together to stage three of Eugene O'Neill's rarely-performed one-acts, Bound East for Cardiff (1914), The Long Voyage Home (1917), and The Moon of the Caribbees (1918). In these early "Glencairn" plays, O’Neill draws on his own experience as a merchant seaman and captures the vernacular of sailors from disparate nations, all shipmates on the British tramp steamer Glencairn. Early Plays debuted this week at St. Ann's Warehouse, and the show's run has already been extended an extra week, through March. We recently spoke with the exceptional playwright Richard Maxwell about the collaboration, which he is directing. more ›

The ongoing legal saga over the city's plan to give DUMBO's Civil War-era Tobacco Warehouse to the theater group St. Ann's Warehouse took an interesting turn on Friday, when a judge ruled that the National Park Service improperly removed the building from federally protected parkland. In January, the Brooklyn Heights Association filed a lawsuit to stop the transfer, arguing that the NPS had illegally cut the Tobacco Warehouse from the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park’s map "so that it could be given to a private organization for free and for its sole and permanent use." Last week, United States District Judge Eric N. Vitalian agreed. more ›

The National Park Service has endorsed the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation's plan to transfer the Civil War-era Brooklyn Tobacco Warehouse in DUMBO to performing arts presenter St. Ann's Warehouse, which currently produces some of the best theater in NYC in a big space across the street. You'll recall that in January, the Brooklyn Heights Association filed a lawsuit to stop the transfer, arguing that the National Park Service (NPS) had illegally removed the Tobacco Warehouse from the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park’s map "so that it could be given to a private organization for free and for its sole and permanent use." After reviewing the records, the National Park Service (NPS) said yesterday that the plan could proceed. more ›

The Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation has officially given the go ahead to St. Ann's Warehouse to develop the Brooklyn Tobacco Warehouse as its future performance space. (The move is spurred by the development of St. Ann's current location across the street into a huge 17-story development.) more ›

Over the course of the past three years, New York theatergoers have gotten well-acquainted with the darkly comic and surreal sensibilities of Irish playwright Enda Walsh, who first caught our eye with his memorable St. Ann's Warehouse debut The Walworth Farce, a deliriously farcical send-up of domestic dysfunction. Last year St. Ann's presented his equally haunting play The New Electric Ballroom, about three sisters channeling their traumatic childhood memories into an obsessive, theatrical reenactment that's probably not all that therapeutic. more ›

The New York Photo Festival is opening today (and will remain open through Sunday) at St. Ann's Warehouse. This is the third year the fest has been running, and was originally designed to be "an American counterpart and thematic successor to the prestigious European photo festivals Les Rencontres d’Arles, PHotoEspaña, and Visa pour l’Image." On top of the main exhibitions, there will be satellite shows installed throughout DUMBO. Here's a look at what you'll see... more ›

Last night the Young@Heart chorus kicked off a stretch of shows at St. Ann's Warehouse (they'll be there through May 1st). The performers range from 73 to 90, but expect to hear what a much younger set keeps on their iPods—they interpret the likes of the Pixies, the Buzzcocks, Bruce Springsteen and more. For their Brooklyn performances, they'll present "End of the Road," "the third part of the Chorus' musical theater 'road' trilogy... an exploration of the power of music to transcend age. The show takes audiences on a journey through the 20th century, with ballads giving way to hardcore rock & roll." Check 'em out in action below (and live!). Geriatric karaoke, this ain't. more ›

When you name your band The Negro Problem, the last place you probably expect to wind up is on Broadway. Yet that's exactly where the multi-talented musician and songwriter Stew found himself back in 2008, starring in his exhilarating rock musical Passing Strange. This unexpected turn of events was made all the weirder for Stew because his longtime collaborator and girlfriend, Heidi Rodewald, was there onstage night after night—despite their relationship having ended two years prior. Passing Strange kept them essentially handcuffed together, and when it finally ended (without the avalanche of Tony awards it so richly deserved), one assumed their professional partnership would end, too. more ›

Noël Coward's Brief Encounter, a classic 1945 British film directed by David Lean and adapted from Coward's one-act play Still Life, tells the story of a middle-class London mom's forbidden romance with a dashing married doctor. Every Thursday, Laura heads into town to do the shopping for her family and take in a matinee; it is during one of these routine outings that she first meets Dr. Alec Harvey in the train station. (He removes a piece of grit from her eye.) A second chance encounter marks the beginning of an affair which, though never consummated, offers both a weekly escape from suburban domestication, and also sends Laura into a spiral of guilt-wracked inner torment. more ›

One of the most memorable plays we saw last year was The Walworth Farce, a pitch-black comedy by Irish playwright Enda Walsh. The story concerned a menacing father who every day forces his two sons to join him in performing a farcical play he wrote about a phony brain surgeon's attempt to cheat his estranged brother out of his inheritance. In that frenzied, hysterical production, the family's shabby apartment doubled as their stage, and all nine parts were played by the housebound men, as a sort of elaborate domestic ritual for an audience of none. more ›

Tonight and Saturday night, the inimitable punk/avant-garde cabaret band Tiger Lillies return to St. Ann's Warehouse for two "Dark and Deviant" concerts, celebrating 20 years together as a band. The shows will highlight songs from the Lillies' award-winning show, Shockheaded Peter, along with numbers from their Grammy-nominated album The Gorey End , plus other deranged favorites spanning their extensive catalogue. Frontman Martyn Jacques, who plays accordion, trained himself as an opera singer with a castrati style while living above a strip club in London for seven years. Which explains a lot about this band! On his way to the airport in England, Jacques responded to some of our questions via e-mail. more ›

If you don't know who Cynthia Hopkins is yet, you will sooner or later—the multi-instrumentalist-singer-songwriter-dancer-actor-playwright (I'm sure I'm missing something) with the distinctively sly voice ought to be headlining Webster Hall, not just opening for David Byrne. (Not that headlining St. Ann's Warehouse is anything to sneeze at, either.) Nevertheless, even if you think you know Cynthia Hopkins, you'll probably still be surprised by the deeply personal way she reveals herself in the unsparing second half of The Success of Failure (or, The Failure of Success), which concludes her convoluted and captivating Accidental Trilogy. But more on that later. more ›

In the century and change since Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House premiered, the play's feminist denunciation of male-dominated domesticity has gone from radical to rather quaint. But leave it to pioneering avant-garde theater company Mabou Mines to blow the dust of the classic with their ingeniously staged production, in which all male characters are played by actors whose heights range from 40 to 53 inches, and the women by actors almost six feet tall. more ›

It’s hard to imagine a production of Macbeth with more sound and fury than the outré adaptation currently battering audiences on the Brooklyn waterfront in DUMBO. Two parts Shakespeare and one part Ridley Scott, this visionary spectacle is the work of Polish director Grzegorz Jarzyna and the TR Warszawa theater company; it’s being staged outdoors in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge with a cast of 32 actors on a 36-foot-high set built specifically for the production. more ›

While moviegoers pack theaters for summer blockbusters like Iron Man and Indiana Jones, it’s refreshing to find big crowds flocking to an entirely different spectacle, one celebrating the Victorian-era phenomenon of do-it-yourself “toy theater” kits. The cavernous St. Ann’s Warehouse in DUMBO was packed on Saturday night for the eighth annual Toy Theater Festival, presented by Great Small Works, a company dedicated to coaxing big ideas out of tiny materials. more ›

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 sons, Blake (Garret Lombard) and Sean (Tadgh Murphy), perform every day for the pleasure of their triple-threat dad. His madcap opus stars a soi-disant brain surgeon named Dinny and concerns his pitiful scheme to cheat his estranged brother Paddy out of his inheritance. more ›