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  Theatre in Review: Red Eye of Love (Amas/Dicapo Opera Theatre)
Clearly the summer silly season is hanging on into September. Consider the plot of Red Eye of Love: Wilmer Flange is an impecunious young man who falls in love with a winsome young thing named Selma Chargesse. Sadly, Selma is ...
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Theatre in Review: Trade Practices (HERE/Pershing Hall, Governors Island)
We are standing in the foyer of Pershing Hall, a Federal-style building that is part of the former Coast Guard post on Governors Island. The walls are covered with murals depicting scenes of wartime -- among them Teddy Roosevelt charging ...
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Theatre in Review: Poor Behavior (Primary Stages/The Duke on 42nd Street)
Poor Behavior begins with a furious argument in progress, the kind of full-throated, lung-bursting, take-no-prisoners battle that makes you wonder what playwright Theresa Rebeck can possibly do for an encore. Fasten ...
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Theatre in Review: Revolution in the Elbow of Ragnar Agnarsson Furniture Painter (Minetta Lane Theatre)
Well, it's August: How else to explain the presence of Revolution in the Elbow of Ragnar Agnarsson Furniture Painter? As I've noted before, it's during August that a kind of cloud of unknowing often descends on producers, ...
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Theatre in Review: Phoenix (Cherry Lane Theatre)
Apparently abortion is the newest meet-cute premise in romantic comedies. Only a few weeks ago, people were talking about the film Obvious Child, in which the heroine tries to sort out her love life while planning the termination of ...
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Theatre in Review: The Opponent (A Red Orchid Theatre/59E59)
Do most plays about boxing suffer from an underpowered first act, followed by a knockout finale? I admit I'm working from a tiny sample here, but in my admittedly limited experience, the answer, two out of three times, is yes. Aside from ...
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Theatre in Review: King Lear (New York Shakespeare Festival/Delacorte Theater)
You can say many things about Daniel Sullivan's staging of King Lear, but you can't say that it lacks a sense of purpose. Everyone involved clearly knows what to do, and goes about their business with brisk ...
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Theatre in Review: Sex with Strangers (Second Stage)
Love and literature make strange bedfellows in Sex with Strangers, a tart comedy that strongly suggests writers should date people in other professions. The author, Laura Eason, has invented just such a pair, made sure ...
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Theatre in Review: Piece of My Heart: The Bert Berns Story (Pershing Square Signature Center)
If you've caught Jersey Boys, Motown, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, and maybe even Baby It's You (for the ten minutes it was around), and you're still hankering for more, I wash my hands of you. Sorry, ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts, Series A (59E59)
Even for a series called Summer Shorts, this program of three one-acts may be too weightless for its own good. Each in its way tries to grapple with serious issues, but each falls short of its goal, mostly thanks to ...
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Theatre in Review: The Pianist of Willesden Lane (59E59)
The story of Lisa Jura is a unique and often startling one, and Mona Golabek is uniquely qualified to tell it -- and not just because she is Jura's daughter. An accomplished concert pianist, Golabek is also a confident stage ...
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Theatre in Review: The Long Shrift (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater)
In The Long Shrift, playwright Robert Boswell brings together two people long after an accusation of rape altered both of their lives forever, and makes them revisit the ugly details of the event in order to render a ...
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Theatre in Review: Play/Date (Fat Baby)
The rage for immersive theatre reaches a new extreme with Play/Date. Pay attention, now, because this one has many facets: As the title suggests, the production takes inventory of the (very occasional) joys and (seemingly ...
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Theatre in Review: Atomic (Theatre Row)
For most of us, nuclear physics is a hard subject to understand; even more difficult to grasp is the new musical Atomic. In fact, it's the most baffling proposition to come our way this summer season: The show's three authors ...
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Theatre in Review: When We Were Young and Unafraid (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
Manhattan Theatre Club has been tough on its leading ladies recently. Even with the aid of a top supporting cast, Mary-Louise Parker struggled to animate The Snow Geese. Blythe Danner and Sarah Jessica Parker, a formidable duo by ...
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Theatre in Review: Donogoo (Mint Theater Company)
In Donogoo, all sorts of characters go racing off to a fictitious Brazilian town in hopes of striking gold. In unearthing Donogoo, a 1930 work by the French dramatist Jules Romains, Mint Theater Company has ...
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Theatre in Review: Holler If Ya Hear Me (Palace Theatre)
If nothing else, Holler If Ya Hear Me provides a case study in the problems and perils of the jukebox musical. Built around the catalog of the late rapper Tupac Shakur, it aims to be a powerful drama about the ...
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Theatre in Review: Time of My Life (Brits Off Broadway/59E59)
In Time of My Life, we are invited to dine with a prize collection of Alan Ayckbourn characters as they muddle their way toward humiliation, bankruptcy, and death -- not to mention the odd triumph. The third offering ...
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Theatre in Review: Much Ado About Nothing (New York Shakespeare Festival/Delacorte Theatre)
"Was ever woman in this humour woo'd? Was ever woman in this humour won?" The words are from Richard III but they apply perfectly to the screwball hilarity spun by Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe in Jack O'Brien' ...
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Theatre in Review: Pat Kirkwood is Angry (59E59/Brits Off Broadway Festival)
Pat Kirkwood had plenty of reason to be angry: In 1948, while performing at the London Hippodrome, she accepted an invitation to have dinner with the Duke of Edinburgh in a Mayfair restaurant. This was not the done thing, to say the least; ...
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