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  Theatre in Review: Tartuffe (New York Theatre Workshop)
Venues create expectations: If New York Theatre Workshop is going to stage a Moliere classic, one quite reasonably expects something wild, even shocking. This is, after all, the company that presented Ivo van Hove's version of Th ...
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Theatre in Review: Masquerade
Welcome to the latest stop on the Andrew Lloyd Webber Reinvention Tour. Whatever new projects the composer may or may not have in the hopper -- no more Bad Cinderellas, please -- he is busily allowing others to repurpose his ...
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Theatre in Review: Predictor (AMT Theater)
A strong point of view is a good thing, to be sure, but a playwright should leave room for the audience to discover something. If fed too many cues, alienation will set in. This is the main problem with Predictor, ...
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Theatre in Review: Oklahoma Samovar (La MaMa)
There are four or five plays, all of them interesting, or perhaps a multigenerational novel in the mold of Edna Ferber or Belva Plain, rattling around inside Oklahoma Samovar. Crammed into two hours or so, the result is a ...
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Theatre in Review: "Anna Christie" (St. Ann's Warehouse)
One doesn't direct a Eugene O'Neill play; one wrestles with it, and, let me assure you, as writers go, he has a mean half-nelson. The problem is clear: No other playwright is as resistant to high-concept approaches or showy ...
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Theatre in Review: Marjorie Prime (Second Stage/Hayes Theater)
I'm sorry to say that we're finally catching up with Marjorie Prime. To be sure, Jordan Harrison's drama, in a production at Playwrights Horizons featuring Lois Smith and Lisa Emery, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer ...
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Theatre in Review: Slam Frank (Asylum NYC)
Has anyone told Cynthia Ozick about Slam Frank? You may recall that, in 1997, the noted novelist and essayist ignited a controversy in the pages of The New Yorker, suggesting that, given the frivolous and sentimental ...
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Theatre in Review: Everything is Here (59E59)
In Everything is Here, the playwright Peggy Stafford books a stay in an assisted living facility, focusing on a trio of feisty friends. They are not Golden Girls, however: Bev, out of money, is moving into severely ...
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Theatre in Review: Diversion (The Barrow Project)
"When Bess calls a meeting, it's usually some sorta shit show. It's a real whodunit." So says Mike, a nurse, to a young colleague, about their tough-as-nails supervisor. It's a meta moment, for Diversion is nothing if not a ...
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Theatre in Review: Gotta Dance! (York Theatre Company/Theatre at St. Jean's)
This new revue, consisting of numbers from hit Broadway shows and the odd film, offers a powerful reminder of what dance can contribute to musical theatre, namely, drama and delight. It's a message that can't be expressed often enough. In ...
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Theatre in Review: The Surgeon and Her Daughter (Colt Coeur at Theatre 154)
The Surgeon and Her Daughter is a great big hunk of playwriting that all but dares you to digest it. It is packed with outsized emotions, brimming with arias, and crowded with characters who have plenty to get off their ...
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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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