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  Theatre in Review: Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) (Longacre Theatre)
A visit to the Longacre Theatre calls up two (for these days) heretical thoughts: One, even on Broadway, modesty can be a virtue. Two, in a musical, a solid book may be more important than the music and lyrics. Consider the case of T ...
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Theatre in Review: Initiative (Public Theater)
I hate to point out the obvious, but an epically scaled play needs ideas of a commensurate size if it is going to succeed. Initiative, by the debuting playwright Else Went, is loaded with ambition, beginning with its ...
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Theatre in Review: Oedipus (Studio 54)
The most remarkable thing about Robert Icke's modern-dress reimagining of Sophocles' tragedy is its composure. Early on, you can sense the drumbeat under the dialogue that hints, quietly but unmistakably, that disaster is coming ...
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Theatre in Review: Practice (Playwrights Horizons)
In Practice, the line between (alleged) genius and exploitation is so porous that it barely seems to exist. I didn't catch Nazareth Hassan's New York debut, Bowl EP, last spring, so, for me, this is an ...
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Theatre in Review: Romy and Michele: The Musical (Stage 42)
I must have been out of the country when Congress passed a law stating that every modestly successful comedy film of the last forty years had to be made into a musical. But I can testify that the public-spirited citizens of the New York ...
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Theatre in Review: The Baker's Wife (Classic Stage Company)
A remarkable reclamation job is taking place at CSC these nights: The Baker's Wife, long the unluckiest of musicals, has finally found a production that explains why theatre artists can never leave it alone. (It's the flop ...
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Theatre in Review: Wake (One Year Lease Theater/59E59)
When talking about death, your mileage may vary. It's the most sensitive of subjects, far more so than sex, and one's response to it is profoundly shaped by one's age, health, personal experiences, and religious beliefs (or lack thereof). ...
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Theatre in Review: The Seat of Our Pants (Public Theater)
In The Seat of Our Pants, the human race is rescued, repeatedly, from disaster. The show isn't so lucky.
If Our Town is the Thornton Wilder play everyone produces, The Skin of Our Teeth is the one ...
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Theatre in Review: Richard II (Red Bull Theater/Astor Place Theatre)
In Craig Baldwin's revival of William Shakespeare's most lyrical play, the title character is a man in a cage. Baldwin, who edited and rearranged bits of the original text, begins with Richard, incarcerated and stripped to ...
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Theatre in Review: Archduke (Roundabout Theatre Company)
If Rajiv Joseph ever had a career in Major League Baseball, he would have been a pitcher; he certainly is a specialist in throwing curveballs. Surely the only playwright in existence to twice build works around the art of origami (< ...
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Theatre in Review: The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire (The Civilians/Vineyard Theatre)
If you believe the above title is awkward, wait until you see the play. Anne Washburn, who often works by indirection, has imagined the members of a farm collective living somewhere in California. Their reasons are mysterious: The ...
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Theatre in Review: The Queen of Versailles (St. James Theatre)
It's almost a tradition: Every couple of decades, Stephen Schwartz writes a musical starring Kristin Chenoweth as a morally compromised heroine. Okay, it's happened exactly twice, but the last time was Wicked, and you ...
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Theatre in Review: Reunions (City Center Stage II)
It's a heterodox opinion, I know, but not everything needs to become a musical. This proposition is proved in duplicate at City Center with Reunions, which musicalizes two notable one-act plays. Indeed, it is an ideal lab: ...
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Theatre in Review: 44: The Musical (Daryl Roth Theatre)
If elected to Congress, I will endeavor to pass the Save US Presidents from Musical Theatre Act. Designed to protect audiences rather than politicians, it will outlaw the concept, creation, and composition of musicals about sitting and/or ...
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Theatre in Review: Fixing Frankie (Little Red Engine Theatre at ART/New York Theatres)
Frankie Scordato doesn't need fixing so much as he could use a little fleshing out. Joe Langworth and Steve Marzullo's new musical is the story of a gay man's progress from wide-eyed youth to haunted middle age, remaining ...
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Theatre in Review: Queens (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
These are pugilistic days at Manhattan Theatre Club. On Broadway, the recently closed Punch focuses on the many repercussions following a blow to the head delivered during a gang fight. Queens begins with Renia, a ...
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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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