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  Theatre in Review: The Fatal Weakness (Mint Theater Company)
Acting students, take note: The all-but-lost art of high comedy technique has been rediscovered and is being given a glittering workout by Kristin Griffith in The Fatal Weakness. As Mrs. Ollie Espenshade, a socially ...
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Theatre in Review: The Wayside Motor Inn (Signature Theatre)
If you've ever spent a lonely night in the cookie-cutter confines of a chain motel, you're bound to experience the shock of recognition at The Wayside Motor Inn. For the first entry of its A. R. Gurney retrospective, ...
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Theatre in Review: Bootycandy (Playwrights Horizons)
A story, running on Playbill Online, about the new show at Playwrights Horizons is titled "Splicing the DNA of Richard Pryor, Jackie Mason, and RuPaul to Create Bootycandy." They might have added Norman Lear, In Living ...
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Theatre in Review: Bauer (San Francisco Playhouse/59E59)
The playwright Lauren Gunderson knows a juicy situation when she sees it; her new play, Bauer, combines dramatic fireworks with a fascinating bit of art history scandal in a package that is all but guaranteed to keep ...
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Theatre in Review: My Mañana Comes (The Playwrights Realm/Peter Jay Sharp Theater)
Talk about timing: At a moment when immigration has become a political hot potato and fast food workers are striking for subsistence wages, along comes Elizabeth Irwin's new play, which casts an unblinking light on back-end ...
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Theatre in Review: And I and Silence (Signature Theatre)
The two women who populate Naomi Wallace's new play are seen in two time frames: as prison mates in 1950 and, nine years later, as the inhabitants of a single room in an unnamed city. In the author's bleak vision, one place is no ...
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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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