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  Theatre in Review: My Joy is Heavy (New York Theatre Workshop)
My Joy is Heavy brings back the musical diarists, Shaun and Abigail Bengson, for update on their spiritual journey. Previously, Hundred Days explored a crisis, early in their marriage, while The Lucky ...
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Theatre in Review: Jesa (Ma-Yi Theater Company/Public Theater)
The title of Jeena Yi's play refers to a memorial service held for ancestors in Korean families, usually on the anniversary of their deaths. Yi corrals four mostly Southern California-based sisters to honor their late mother, with a ...
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Theatre in Review: Tru (House of the Redeemer)
Tru is a Yuletide tale, and the title character, Truman Capote, is its Ghost of Christmas Past, bent on haunting himself. It is 1975, and the best-selling author, ubiquitous talk-show guest, and party animal has crash-landed ...
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Theatre in Review: Monte Cristo (The York Theatre/Theatre at St. Jean's)
Seeing Monte Cristo the other night, I was oddly reminded of "Reader's Digest," a number by Betty Comden and Adolph Green from their nightclub days, applying the famous magazine's approach to classic novels. (The Reader's ...
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Theatre in Review: Cold War Choir Practice (MCC Theater/Clubbed Thumb/Page 73)
If the Thirties were, as W. H. Auden insisted, "a low dishonest decade," the Eighties were all about agita, not least because of persistent nuclear jitters. For those who were there, a visit to MCC Theatre brings it all crashing back, ...
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Theatre in Review: Ulster American (Irish Repertory Theatre)
The main takeaway from Ulster American: Hell hath no fury like Geraldine Hughes scorned. As Ruth Davenport, a Belfast-born playwright at the mercy of a narcissistic, boneheaded Hollywood star and a craven British ...
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Theatre in Review: Every Brilliant Thing (Hudson Theatre)
Every Brilliant Thing centers on a list, compiled by the play's protagonist, of the details that make life worth living, and if Daniel Radcliffe isn't on it, that needs to be rectified immediately. Whatever you think ...
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Theatre in Review: Bughouse (Vineyard Theatre)
Bughouse resurrects the strange case of Henry Darger, janitor, recluse, and, in the opinion of many, one of the all-time great outsider artists. Darger lived a marginal, almost friendless, existence in and around Chicago, yet ...
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Theatre in Review: Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)/(Public Theater)
There's no doubt about it: Antigone is this season's It Girl. We've already had The Other Place, which resets Sophocles' tragedy in a contemporary renovated British kitchen. (Antigone, and Creon, her uncle and antagonist, are named ...
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Theatre in Review: Spare Parts (Theatre Row)
Spare Parts is best described as science fiction: The topic is science run amok, and the characters behave in ways that only a not-too-fastidious playwright could make up. Welcome to the lair of Zeit Smith, the Elon Musk ...
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Theatre in Review: Zack (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)
Zack is a romantic comedy with an accountant's heart; it's a strategy that worked for playwright Harold Brighouse when he penned the early twentieth-century classic Hobson's Choice, about the rebellious daughter ...
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Theatre in Review: Marcel on the Train (Classic Stage Company)
Marcel on the Train features some impressive feats of juggling, but they're nothing compared to that practiced by playwrights Marshall Pailet and Ethan Slater. Drawing on a not especially well-known incident ...
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Theatre in Review: Blood/Love (Theatre 555)
The vampire musical is back, a genre that seemingly ran its course about twenty years ago but apparently is, you know, undead. The early 2000s saw a rash of them, but Dance of the Vampires, Dracula: The Musical, and Lestat< ...
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Theatre in Review: Bigfoot! (City Center Stage I)
Bigfoot! may set a record for the highest number of comparison jokes in a single night's entertainment. How much you enjoy them will determine your tolerance of this new musical. Commenting on their pollution-riddled hometown ...
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Theatre in Review: The Reservoir (Atlantic Theater Company)
Noah Galvin is the nominal star of The Reservoir, but, really, he is the emcee of it. To be sure, his character, Josh, has plenty of problems, which are aired in some detail in this nervous, tentatively serious comedy, ...
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Theatre in Review: Spread (INTAR Theatre)
Some things never change: The quartet of adolescent boys portrayed in Spread is instantly recognizable, no matter how old you are. As high school freshmen in East Texas, they share the bravado, anxieties, rivalries, goofy in ...
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Theatre in Review: Chinese Republicans (Roundabout/Laura Pels Theatre)
In the Chinese community, this is the Year of the Horse. In the theatre community, it might arguably be the Year of Alex Lin. Delivering a one-two punch of provocative new plays in less than three months, she has immediately ...
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Theatre in Review: Meat Suit or The Shitshow of Motherhood (Second Stage)
Given the declining birth rate in this country, I'm not sure we need Meat Suit or The Shitshow of Motherhood (currently playing at Second Stage/Pershing Square Signature Center), but anyway, here it is, to make of what you ...
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Theatre in Review: Mother Russia (Signature Theatre Company)
When an actor, especially one as gifted as David Turner, is cast as an entire country, you can expect that scenes will be stolen. As, yes, the title character in Mother Russia, who represents the spirit of a ...
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Theatre in Review: You Got Older (Cherry Lane Theatre)
I don't know why we're getting Clare Barron's 2014 family tragicomedy once again, but it's good to have it back, especially in Anne Kauffman's sharply observed production. It constitutes Exhibit A in the argument that the ...
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