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  Theatre in Review: Heathers (New World Stages)
When did the musical theatre become a charnel house? I mean, really, people: I remember when Oklahoma! was known as the rare musical in which someone is killed. Sweeney Todd was quite the shocker in 1979, what with all those ...
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Theatre in Review: A Raisin in the Sun (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)
History repeats itself on Broadway in ever-sooner iterations these days. Not only are we getting A Raisin in the Sun again only ten years after its last production, it comes with the same director, Kenny Leon. Even in today's ...
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Theatre in Review: If/Then (Richard Rodgers Theatre)
Elizabeth, the heroine of If/Then, is ambivalent about everything in her life -- her divorce, her career, the men who would like to woo her -- so much so that it's hard not to be a little ambivalent about her. When we meet her at ...
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Theatre in Review: Hellman v. McCarthy (Abingdon Theatre Company)
The title bout may be Hellman v. McCarthy, but the laurels go to the referee, Dick Cavett. Brian Richard Mori's new play, about one of the 20th century's great literary catfights, is framed as an episode of The Dick ...
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Theatre in Review: Jasper in Deadland (Prospect Theater Company/West End Theater)
Jasper, the hero of Jasper in Deadland, is one troubled teen. His parents are divorcing, his mother has a boyfriend, he hates school, and he has no friends. Well, actually, he has one friend, a girl named Agnes, but as this new ...
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Theatre in Review: Beyond Therapy (The Actors Company Theatre/Theatre Row)
Beyond Therapy begins with the blind date from hell: Having been introduced through a personal ad, Bruce and Prudence meet for the first time in a restaurant. He says, "I hope you don't think I'm too macho for you." He also ...
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Theatre in Review: Tales from Red Vienna (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
Tales from Red Vienna certainly opens on an attention-getting note, with a wordless, anonymous, paid sexual encounter. Through a blue diaphanous curtain, we see a couple enter an apartment. She is in full mourning, her face ...
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Theatre in Review: Les Misérables (Imperial Theatre)
Attention, everyone: Les Misérables is back on Broadway, as big as life and twice as bombastic. I hear some of you in the back of the room grumbling, Why do we need a revival of a show that ran 6,680 performances the first ...
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Theatre in Review: Mothers and Sons (Golden Theatre)
Tyne Daly has mastered the art of revealing exactly what she is thinking while remaining thoroughly poker-faced. It's a skill that she puts to excellent use in Terrence McNally's Mothers and Sons, as Katharine ...
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Theatre in Review: Appropriate (Signature Theatre Company)
Looking for some dysfunctional family action? In Appropriate, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has assembled the most neurotic and fractious tribe to be seen since the Westons of Osage County last staged a dining room brawl. You ...
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Theatre in Review: Aladdin (New Amsterdam Theatre)
It seems ever-clearer that the Disney Theatricals crew is going back to the future. The company's most recent production, Newsies, was conceived firmly in the classic '50s - '60s book musical tradition, and, thanks to a solid ...
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Theatre in Review: Day of the Dog (St. Louis Actors' Studio/59E59)
Paul and Julianne have a problem: Their dog, Carrot, has a few issues relating to humans. Exactly how vexing these are can be gleaned from the bandages running up and down Paul's arms. Things have come to such a pass that Paul is frankly ...
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Theatre in Review: All the Way (Neil Simon Theatre)
The first-night reviews for All the Way focused on Bryan Cranston's much-anticipated Broadway debut as Lyndon B. Johnson; nothing wrong with that, and we'll get to Cranston in a moment. But even more impressive is the company ...
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Theatre in Review: Rocky (Winter Garden Theatre)
If Rocky turns out to be Broadway's next blockbuster, it will be because of Alex Timbers, the next great theatre showman. The same director who presided over the conversion of the Bernard B. Jacobs into a bizarre ...
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Theatre in Review: 50 Shades! The Musical (Elektra Theatre)
All right, I confess: I've been to see 50 Shades! The Musical, a spoof of E L James' 50 Shades of Grey, the first in a trilogy of bondage porn novels that have been steaming up the reading glasses of American ...
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Theatre in Review: Kung Fu (Signature Theatre)
Early on in Kung Fu, David Henry Hwang's oddly truncated biography of film actor and martial arts phenomenon Bruce Lee, a young woman makes the point that there has never been a Chinese hero in American pop culture. It ...
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Theatre in Review: The Pig (Untitled Theatre Company #61/3-Legged Dog)
The program for The Pig, or Václav Havel's Hunt for a Pig, says that it is neither a play nor an operetta, even though it has elements of both; instead, it is best understood as a collage. And, may I say, it is ...
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Theatre in Review: No Exit (Pearl Theatre Company)
If Jean-Paul Sartre now occupies some dark corner of Hades -- heaven would surely be a torment to him -- then he must be gazing up with a smile these days, thanks to the Pearl's revival of No Exit. A work more likely to turn ...
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Theatre in Review: Take Me Back (Kindling Theatre Company/Walkerspace)
A young man's life unravels over the course of a single day in Take Me Back, by Emily Schwend, who should be added to your list of names to remember. We are in a kitchen in Muskogee, Oklahoma, belonging to Sue, a ...
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Theatre in Review: The Open House (Signature Theatre)
Whether he is spinning monologues about existential angst in solo shows like Thom Pain (based on nothing) or building whole communities where reality is a slippery thing, as in Middletown, the playwright Will Eno ...
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