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  Theatre in Review: A Bodega Princess Remembers La Fiesta de los Reyes Magos, 1998 (EST)
If you attend the solo show with the lengthy title (see above) at Ensemble Studio Theatre, many things lie in store for you. You will hear Spanish-language versions of "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Frosty the Snowman." You might ...
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Theatre in Review: Laowang (Primary Stages/59E59)
Laowang is the kind of play you can pick at endlessly -- the author, Alex Lin, tosses a little of everything into a tumultuous ninety minutes -- but you can't mistake its vigor, comic energy, and knack for surprise ...
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Theatre in Review: Chess (Imperial Theatre)
Chess is back, bigger than life and twice as noisy. Now on its third book (at least), the much-maligned musical remains an infectious score in search of a plausible, involving story. More than four decades on, it still ...
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Theatre in Review: Meet the Cartozians (Second Stage/Pershing Square Signature Center)
The rising young playwright Talene Monahon may be having her breakthrough moment with Meet the Cartozians, a then-and-now comedy about identity, history, and the price of assimilation that calls to mind (and stacks up ...
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Theatre in Review: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (New World Stages)
When the revival of this long-running musical was announced, I grumpily thought, So soon? We just had it. (All right: It was twenty years ago; so sue me. And it ran for three years. So there.) Having seen this thoroughly delightful ...
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Theatre in Review: Gruesome Playground Injuries (Lucille Lortel Theatre)
Doug and Kayleen, the hapless pair in Rajiv Joseph's fractured fable, constitute the walking wounded, literally: When we first meet them as grade schoolers, they are holed up in the school infirmary. She has a bad stomach; he has ...
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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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