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  Theatre in Review: Pygmalion (Gingold Theatrical Group/Theatre Row)
The first glimpse of Lindsay Genevieve Fuori's set for Pygmalion disconcerts: It's a pop-up pen-and-ink sketch of an august structure in the Classical style, surrounded by fluffy clouds, with none other than George ...
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Theatre in Review: Kyoto (Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater)
Kyoto, now commanding the Newhouse stage with uncommon fire, is the type of production that makes Lincoln Center Theater indispensable -- a sweeping, large-canvas drama about contemporary political history. (Other recent ...
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Theatre in Review: The Wasp (Little Engine Theater)/The Lucky Ones (Boomerang Theatre Company)
Fraught female relationships are the theme of the week, with two different plays focusing on connections that are, to put it mildly, freighted with considerable baggage. In each case, the situations have life-or-death implications. ...
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Theatre in Review: Little Bear Ridge Road (Booth Theatre)
Like many of Samuel D. Hunter's plays, Little Bear Ridge Road is a miniature that contains multitudes. Focusing on a trio of characters in his home state of Idaho, a stretch of the Northwest he has made his personal ...
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Theatre in Review: Liberation (James Earl Jones Theatre)
The good news: Liberation -- to my mind, the best new American play of last season -- has transferred to Broadway in tiptop shape. The even better news: It has arrived with its superb cast intact. And, eight months after it ...
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Theatre in Review: Endgame (Druid/Irish Arts Center)
Garry Hynes' production of Samuel Beckett's classic study of stasis, oppression, and (quite possibly) the end of the world derives much of its effect from the yawning gap between the characters' grandiloquent delivery and ...
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Theatre in Review: Did You Eat? (Ma-Yi Theater/Public Theater)
The solo piece Did You Eat? is the first entry in Zoe Kim's proposed trilogy about hunger, and it begins on a wryly amusing note, as she translates her mother's "love language," in which deeper concerns are shrouded ...
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Theatre in Review: Let's Love! (Atlantic Theater Company)/Dreadful Episodes (59E59)
We've had a run on short-form theatre this week, with two attractions that combine playlets and/or vignettes with musical interludes. I hate to use the "R" word; let's call them revue-adjacent. In each case, such flexible formats provide ...
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Theatre in Review: Playing Shylock (Polonsky Shakespeare Center)
Playing Shylock is a rare (maybe the first) example of theatrical autofiction, a genre that comes with built-in issues: The great character actor Saul Rubinek is out to settle numerous scores -- involving political ...
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Theatre in Review: Other (Greenwich House Theatre)
Other begins on Ari'el Stachel's evening of triumph, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance in The Band's Visit. The after-party is a nightmare, however, with the actor ...
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Theatre in Review: Not Ready for Prime Time (The Newman Mills Theater at The Robert W. Wilson MCC)
There are only two things wrong with Not Ready for Prime Time, a comic drama about the birth of Saturday Night Live: It isn't very dramatic and isn't very funny.
Indeed, a situation that should be rife with tension ...
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Theatre in Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (The Resident Acting Company/Sheen Center)
Whatever else one can say about this staging of William Shakespeare's evergreen comedy, it has an amusing concept. This is A Midsummer Night's Dream "as told by the Mechanicals." The action unfolds in Peter Quince's ...
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Theatre in Review: Ragtime (Lincoln Center Theater/Vivian Beaumont Theater)
If Lear DeBessonet's new production of this modern musical classic makes anything clear, it is that Ragtime is our time. Terrence McNally's book wrangles E. L. Doctorow's seemingly unadaptable novel, creating ...
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Theatre in Review: Oh Happy Day! (Public Theater)
When was the last time you saw a guardian angel onstage? In Oh Happy Day!, playwright Jordan E. Cooper, a generous soul, supplies no fewer than three. Their names are Glory Divine, Holy Divine, and Mighty Divine. ("No ...
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Theatre in Review: Italian American Reconciliation (The Flea Theater)
At the Flea the other night, I kept thinking of Billie Dawn's famous line from Born Yesterday: "Are you one of those talkers, or would you be interested in a little action?" Nobody in Italian-American Reconciliation ...
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Theatre in Review: Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God (Playwrights Horizons)
Frances Reinhardt, the hurricane eye of Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God, is skilled at harvesting lucrative popular art from her embarrassing and/or traumatic past. Having fled her evangelical upbringing in ...
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Theatre in Review: Crooked Cross (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)
In case you're wondering, a crooked cross is a swastika, the red flag signaling a country's descent into hell. It's also the title of a novel, the first in a trilogy, by the British writer Sally Carson, about a German family in ...
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Theatre in Review: Waiting for Godot (Hudson Theatre)/Krapp's Last Tape (NYU Skirball)
How do you like your Samuel Beckett? Frothy and starry, or straight, no chaser? In New York this week, you have a choice: A slicked-up revival of Waiting for Godot, starring Hollywood's once and future Bill and Ted,
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Theatre in Review: Caroline (MCC Theater)
One of the greatest pleasures the theatre offers is when a new writer appears, offering a fresh, distinctive voice. So it is with Preston Max Allen, author of Caroline, which, in David Cromer's tightly ...
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Theatre in Review: This Much I Know (59E59)
This Much I Know begins with Lukesh, a psychology professor with a specialty in cognition, lecturing about the many ways, accurate and not, we process information -- or, as he puts it, "This is how we move through the world ...
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