With The Book of Mormon taking home 9 Tony Awards this year, we’re pulling this review of the Broadway musical from our archives. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the guys who created South Park, like to boast that they are equal-opportunity offenders. Which is true. Over the past 10 years that their potty-mouthed, thumb-in-your-eye animated…

With NBC’s new series The Playboy Club premiering Sept. 19, 2011, The Root’s editorial staff decided to revisit another side of the original Playboy Club nightclub-chain founder. Hugh Hefner isn’t one of the names you usually think of when you hear the words “civil rights pioneer.” So I was more than a little dubious when…

Two new plays with black characters as central figures opened on Sunday. It will probably add more fuel to the ongoing debate about whether having a black family in the White House has prompted artistic directors and commercial producers to invite more African-American actors, writers and directors into their house. At least 20 shows in…

You’ve got to give Suzan-Lori Parks credit for following her creative muse wherever it takes her. Sometimes it leads her to fresh and satisfyingly fertile places, as happened with Topdog/Underdog, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002. Other times it lands her in the weeds, as, alas, it’s done with The Book of Grace, her…