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  Theatre in Review: James Dickey's Deliverance (Godlight Theatre Company/59E59)
Deliverance, the play: Sounds like a joke, right? If you've ever read James Dickey's harrowing 1970 novel or the stomach-churning 1972 film adaptation, you will rightfully wonder what the theatre can bring to this ...
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Theatre in Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time sets out to do what the theatre has no business doing, and does it brilliantly. Theatre is, by its very nature, omniscient; yes, many plays feature narrators with their own ...
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Theatre in Review: Jacuzzi (The Debate Society/Ars Nova)
Come on in; the water's fine -- but be careful to whom you spill your guts in Jacuzzi, a nifty black comedy/psychological thriller designed to keep you on pins and needles for the entirety of its 100-minute running time. ...
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Theatre in Review: It's Only a Play (Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre)
Theatre in Review: It's Only a Play (Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre) Lorne Michaels once observed that comedy is really a form of complaining, a notion borne out - fully and hilariously - in It's Only a Play, Terrence McNally
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Theatre in Review: While I Yet Live (Primary Stages/The Duke on 42nd Street)
As a star of Broadway musicals, Billy Porter is at the head of his class. As a playwright, however, I'm afraid he's in need of a little remedial instruction. The premise of his initial effort, While I Yet Live -- a ...
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Theatre in Review: Port Authority (Irish Repertory Theatre)
"I don't know if I'm happy or sad," says Joe, one of the trio of lost souls who make up the cast of Port Authority. He could be speaking for all of them. The lovelorn Kevin; terrified, alcoholic Dermot; and the elderly Joe all have stories ...
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Theatre in Review: Indian Ink (Roundabout Theatre Company/Laura Pels Theatre)
In Indian Ink, Tom Stoppard invents a minor literary mystery and then solves it, taking he his sweet time in doing so; the result is sometimes intriguing and touching but often rather sluggish. It is typical ...
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Theatre in Review: The Country House (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
When The Country House finally gets down to brass tacks and bared emotions, it becomes a drama with the vigor to match its intelligence. Elliot, a 50ish actor of no distinction with an alarmingly thin resume, has decided to ...
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Theatre in Review: Tail! Spin! (Lynn Redgrave Theater at Culture Project)
Who doesn't love a juicy political sex scandal? That's the theory behind Tail! Spin!, which revisits four of the squirrelier episodes involving elected officials of recent years. Lest you think that these hypocritical ...
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Theatre in Review: The Money Shot (MCC/Lucille Lortel Theatre)
From Kaufman and Hart to Douglas Carter Beane, it seems that every playwright sooner or later must take a knife to the (lack of) manners and (appallingly low) morals in Hollywood. Fine by me: Some the tastiest satires in the American canon ...
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Theatre in Review: You Can't Take It With You (Longacre Theatre)
You Can't Take It With You ends in a display of fireworks, which, however colorful, pales compared to the human sparklers on stage at the Longacre. Scott Ellis' production of Kaufman and Hart's utopian farce, ...
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Theatre in Review: Almost Home (The Directors Company/Theatre Row)
There's not much to be said about Almost Home, an amateurish effort that The Directors Company has done no favors by giving a full mounting with a name cast. The setup of Walter Anderson's drama is a little bit like Frank D. ...
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Theatre in Review: This is Our Youth (Cort Theatre)
Arrested development has rarely been as uproarious or as touching as in This is Our Youth. By nailing his trio of characters and their milieu--- three lost Jewish kids from well-off Upper West Side families, circa 1982-- - down to ...
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Theatre in Review: Love Letters (Brooks Atkinson Theatre)
Considered from a distance, A. R. Gurney's Love Letters probably looks like the last word in stunt theatre: A two-character play told entirely in letters, designed to be read rather than acted out, and featuring a rotating ...
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Theatre in Review: Scenes from a Marriage (New York Theatre Workshop)
The director Ivo van Hove has made a career out of turning classic texts into bizarre exercises in style. I am thinking of his version of A Streetcar Named Desire, in which Blanche DuBois was repeatedly tossed into a bathtub ...
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Theatre in Review: The Valley of Astonishment (Theatre for a New Audience/Polonsky Shakespeare Center)
How do we know? That's the question nagging at Peter Brook and his colleagues in The Valley of Astonishment, a beguiling and original entertainment that kicks off Theatre for a New Audience's new season. A light-fingered and ...
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Theatre in Review: Uncle Vanya (Pearl Theatre Company)
Pearl Theatre Company opens its new season with a production that demonstrates both the pleasures and limitations of repertory. The Pearl is one of the very few companies in New York that relies on a select troupe of actors; for regular ...
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Theatre in Review: To the Bone (Cherry Lane Theatre)
There must be something in the air: To the Bone is the second play this month examining the plight of undocumented workers who prop up the US economy with nothing but scars to show for it. The first was My Mañana Comes ...
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Theatre in Review: Ndebele Funeral (Smoke & Mirrors Collaborative/59E59)
In drama, as in poetry, I'm all in favor of compression; the more economically one can express one's ideas, the better. But one can go too far, which is the problem afflicting Ndebele Funeral. In writing a classic state-of ...
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Theatre in Review: Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical (Theatre at St. Clement's)
The procession of inside-the-music jukebox tuners continues with Mighty Real, which covers the life of Sylvester, the androgynous disco diva who made his mark on the '70s music scene with such hits as "Can't Stop Dancing," "Do ...
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