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  Theatre in Review: Farcicals (59E59/Brits Off Broadway Festival)
One of the best things about the Ayckbourn Ensemble, the trio of comedies now at 59E59, is the chance it offers to appreciate Alan Ayckbourn's immense talents as a director. This is especially true of Farcicals, ...
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Theatre in Review: Fly by Night (Playwrights Horizons)
When the magic finally happens in Fly by Night, it arrives with a blackout. It is November 9, 1965, and, as darkness falls on New York City, this tangled tale of mismatched lovers comes to a halt. We are plunged into gloom, ...
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Theatre in Review: When January Feels Like Summer (Ensemble Studio Theatre/Page 73)
Another title for When January Feels Like Summer could be When Theatre Feels Like a Television Sitcom. Playwright Cori Thomas' deft ability to get inside the heads of a wide range of characters is undercut by ...
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Theatre in Review: Macbeth (Park Avenue Armory)
"This castle has a pleasant seat." Not this time; Christopher Oram's supersized set for Kenneth Branagh's blockbuster version of Macbeth is dark and clammy, a mud-stained place. It's a cross between Stonehenge ...
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Theatre in Review: Arrivals and Departures (Stephen Joseph Theatre/59E59)
It's Alan Ayckbourn's 75th birthday and we're getting the presents. To celebrate his three-score-plus-five, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Ayckbourn's home base for decades, has brought us a gift package of three of the master's plays, two ...
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Theatre in Review: Just Jim Dale (Roundabout/Laura Pels Theatre)
Just Jim Dale? Really? I can't think of a less apposite title. The man contains multitudes; he is a musical all by himself. Well, all right; he has an accompanist, Mark York. Otherwise, he is the complete entertainment ...
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Theatre in Review: The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise (The Play Company/JACK)
There are five people -- three men and two women -- on stage in The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise: youth is not the only thing that's sonic, but much of the time they represent a single voice, that of a youngish person who ...
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Theatre in Review: Sawbones and The Diamond Eater (HERE)
The distinguished costume designer Carrie Robbins has recently turned her hand to writing plays, and for this evening of one-acts she has selected quite a pair of yarns. (They are billed as true stories, taken from the writings of ...
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Theatre in Review: Deepest Man (3LD Art & Technology Center)
Deepest Man is a dream play that unfolds in the last few moments of its protagonist's life. Dr. Hazzardville Sommers has been institutionalized following his wife's death, apparently by drowning. Brought into his room by a ...
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Theatre in Review: Why Bother? (Planet Connections Theatre Festival)
Why Bother? is a showcase for young writing talent, but the acting is the thing in this quartet of one-act comedies. Given material that ranges from delightful to hackneyed, a game cast of young talents keeps things watchable under ...
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Theatre in Review: A Fable (Cherry Lane Theatre)
The signs in the lobby of the Cherry Lane Theatre warn attendees that A Fable contains "several acts of extreme violence," including "rape, stabbing, gunshot, and poisoning." Furthermore, we are advised, "several souls hang in the ...
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Theatre in Review: Sea Marks (Irish Repertory Theatre)
Sea Marks is a love story in which the words matter more than the people. Gardner McKay's two-hander, which had a brief Off Broadway run in 1981, starts out as an epistolary drama, a literary romance rather than a ...
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Theatre in Review: A Loss of Roses (Peccadillo Theater Company)
Companies like Peccadillo do us a favor when reviving rarely seen works from the not-so-distant theatrical past. Almost always, these are of interest and, in many cases, plays of real quality are brought back to life, proving that ...
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Theatre in Review: The City of Conversation (Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater)
It was Henry James who called Washington, D.C. "the city of conversation," and Anthony Giardina's play is about one of the women who used her social skills to facilitate that conversation. For decades, hostesses like Perle Mesta, ...
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Theatre in Review: The Few (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre)
One of the playwright Samuel D. Hunter's many virtues is his freshness of vision; he shows us characters and worlds we haven't seen before. In The Few, the lights come up on a dingy, cluttered trailer interior in which a man ...
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Theatre in Review: Here Lies Love (The Public Theater)
Featuring the most strikingly original musical staging I've seen in years, Here Lies Love has returned to the Public, this time in an open-ended commercial run. David Byrne and Fatboy Slim have converted the gaudy, ...
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Theatre in Review: The Lovesong of Alfred J. Hitchcock (Brits Off Broadway/59E59)
Can't we keep Alfred Hitchcock off the analyst's couch? Apparently, the temptation to put him there is irresistible. In 2012, there was the feature film Hitchcock, about the making of Psycho, which was criticized by Times< ...
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Theatre in Review: Playing with Grown Ups (Brits Off Broadway/59E59)
"I find adults fascinating." So says the winsome 17-year-old Stella, who is about to discover the consequences of playing with grown-ups. If only the adults in Hannah Patterson's play were worthy of that fascination. Instead, Pla ...
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Theatre in Review: An Octoroon (Soho Rep)
An Octoroon comes with such a controversial production back story that it gets referenced in its opening scene. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' play was originally scheduled to be produced at P.S. 122 in 2010, but things got ...
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Theatre in Review: 17 Orchard Point (Theatre Row)
Say what you want about Michele Pawk: She knows how to make an entrance. At the beginning of 17 Orchard Point, she sashays through the front door of a modest Cleveland house, in a chic black-and-white suit, an enormous ...
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