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  Theatre in Review: A Man's a Man (Classic Stage Company)
What's in a name? That's quite a question in A Man's a Man, an early work by Bertolt Brecht in which a simple switch of identity can have profound consequences. Set in India during the dying days of the Raj, it centers ...
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Theatre in Review: Intimacy (The New Group at Theatre Row)
Thomas Bradshaw is Off Broadway's exploitation king. Just as the writers and directors of exploitation films aim to cash in on sex or violence, subsuming plot, dialogue, and cinematography along the way, Bradshaw only wants to get ...
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Theatre in Review: Outside Mullingar (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
In Outside Mullingar, John Patrick Shanley explores the eternal contrariness of the Irish in matters of the heart, to delightful and frequently hilarious effect. Shanley has imagined a pair of adjoining farms somewhere ...
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Theatre in Review: The Clearing (Theatre at St. Clement's)
Two brothers share a secret that festers for years, with devastating consequences, in The Clearing, an extremely glum family drama that never quite finds a compelling path into its characters' obsessions and neuroses. Les and ...
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Theatre in Review: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (Stephen Sondheim Theatre)
The really beautiful thing about the new show at the Sondheim is Jessie Mueller. Ever since she broke out of the revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, enlivening that deeply misguided production as a sassy '40s-era ...
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Theatre in Review: Grounded (Page 73 Productions at Walkerspace)
An Air Force pilot's life unravels in Grounded, a work of rare immediacy that dares to examine one of the uglier facts of life in the modern security state. Known only as The Pilot, she describes her career -- flying an F16 ...
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Theatre in Review: I Am the Wind (The Shop/59E59)
The title of Jon Fosse's play is honesty itself; you won't find a windier evening of theatre in town at the moment. In I Am the Wind, a pair of ill-defined characters set sail on a sea of vagueness for an undefined ...
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Theatre in Review: Machinal (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre)
According to my French-English dictionary, the word "machinal" means "pertaining to machines." The term is all too appropriate, for Machinal, the play, is a kind of machine built to drive its protagonist to destruction. As ...
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Theatre in Review: Loot (Red Bull Theater/Lucille Lortel Theatre)
"Has no one in this house any normal feelings?" So cries out one of the desperate characters in Loot. Well, it depends on what you mean by normal. In the world of Joe Orton's 1966 farce, murder, grand theft, torture, ...
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Theatre in Review: Helen and Edgar (Under the Radar/Public Theater)
"Mother always used to say to us, 'Beware of Savannah!'" So says Edgar Oliver at the beginning of his one-person show, in which Southern Gothic mannerisms spread out through the Anspacher Theatre like an outbreak of kudzu. Actually, Edgar ...
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Theatre in Review: Tyson vs. Ali (COIL Festival/3LD Art & Technology Center)
Just how dominant can projections be in a theatre production? Can they be the whole show? This question has driven the career of Reid Farrington, a kind of theatre auteur who has built a number of works around the daring, inventive ...
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Theatre in Review: Rodney King (Under the Radar/Public Theater)
Some performers shout to get one's attention; Roger Guenveur Smith barely has to raise his voice to make one spellbound. Smith understands that outrage is all the more compelling for being held in check, carefully coiled, ready to ...
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Theatre in Review: Cirkopolis (Skirball Center)
If you enjoy the circus in its more modern manifestations and have grown a little weary of the bombast and overdesign that often plagues Cirque du Soleil's attraction, then Cirkopolis may be just the thing for you. It's the ...
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Theatre in Review: Chéri (Signature Theatre)
Passion duels with practicality in Chéri, Martha Clarke's beguiling distillation of a pair novels by Colette. Written in the 1920s, they present a situation that still shocks: The title character is barely out of his ...
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Theatre in Review: Twelfth Night (Belasco Theatre)
It has become common shorthand to refer to the current shows at the Belasco as the "Mark Rylance Shakespeares." As brilliant as he is, however, this does a disservice to the overall excellence of the company performing in Richard ...
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Theatre in Review: Love, Linda (York Theatre Company)
What to say about the marriage of Cole and Linda Porter? It was just one of those things. An alliance that lasted a lifetime, it was nevertheless a cocktail of swanky good times and discreetly tended heartbreak. A true Southern belle -- a ...
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Theatre in Review: The Pigeoning (HERE Arts Center)
Not since Alfred Hitchcock sent Tippi Hedren strolling down a dark corridor into a dark room filled with angry avians has there been so much fine feathered mayhem as you will find in The Pigeoning. Robin Frohardt's ...
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Theatre in Review: How I Learned What I Learned (Signature Theatre/Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre)
August Wilson gives us a tour of his early life in How I Learned What I Learned. A kind of self-portrait of the artist as a young man, it excels in drawing a vivid portrait of life in Pittsburgh's Hill District, ...
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Theatre in Review: Le Jazz Hot: How the French Saved Jazz (59E59)
"If it weren't for France, jazz would be dead." This statement, made by Quincy Jones to musicians Peter and Will Anderson, genuinely startles. Yes, the French have always adored jazz -- but the idea that they gave the kiss of ...
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Theatre in Review: The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence (Playwrights Horizons)
The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence gives a twist to the classic romantic comedy setup: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl gets operating system. It's a story that plays out in multiple periods, mixing historical ...
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