Research Guides: Theatre Research Guide: Theatre Reviews

Theatre Review Sources

Theatre reviews are usually brief recommendations on the entertainment, cultural, or artistic value of a play or other theatrical production. They typically include a plot summary and a few key points about outstanding features of the production.

For scholarly or theoretical analysis of plays, directors, staging, genres, etc., look for books in the catalogs or articles in the databases listed on other tabs in this guide.

The Reference Collection includes lists of play reviews. Here are a few examples:

A Guide to Critical Reviews and its supplements (ref PN 1655 S342)
How to Locate Reviews of Plays and Films: A Bibliography (ref PN 1701 S35)
American Drama Criticism and its supplements (ref PS 332 E33)

On the Web

CurtainUp
Has reviews from both the US and Britain; use the Reviews or Review Archives links (in the yellow column on the left of the screen), or search for play title, director, or actors.

Try searching for the title of your play and "theatre reviews" in your favorite search engine.

Backstage
Has reviews for New York and Los Angeles productions.

Databases for Theatre Reviews

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Access to more than 13,000 scholarly journals and popular magazines in all academic disciplines from 1975 to the present.

Some articles will be available in fulltext in these databases. If the fulltext isn't there, use the "Find It @ HSU" button to see if the article is in another database that we have. The How-to videos on the Getting Started tab show how to do this.

New York Times - Historical File This link opens in a new window
Provides access to historical New York Times articles with index (1851-2018). Search using subject terms and topics for focused and targeted results in combination with searchable full text, full page, and article-level images from the Historical New York Times.
OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
Provides a wide range of research resources, including subject coverage in the applied sciences, art, education, humanities, law, social sciences, and technology.
ProQuest Newsstand This link opens in a new window
Includes international, national and regional papers. Covers not only complete bibliographic information but also subjects, companies, people, products, and geographic areas.