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  Theatre in Review: When We Were Young and Unafraid (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
Manhattan Theatre Club has been tough on its leading ladies recently. Even with the aid of a top supporting cast, Mary-Louise Parker struggled to animate The Snow Geese. Blythe Danner and Sarah Jessica Parker, a formidable duo by ...
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Theatre in Review: Donogoo (Mint Theater Company)
In Donogoo, all sorts of characters go racing off to a fictitious Brazilian town in hopes of striking gold. In unearthing Donogoo, a 1930 work by the French dramatist Jules Romains, Mint Theater Company has ...
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Theatre in Review: Holler If Ya Hear Me (Palace Theatre)
If nothing else, Holler If Ya Hear Me provides a case study in the problems and perils of the jukebox musical. Built around the catalog of the late rapper Tupac Shakur, it aims to be a powerful drama about the ...
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Theatre in Review: Time of My Life (Brits Off Broadway/59E59)
In Time of My Life, we are invited to dine with a prize collection of Alan Ayckbourn characters as they muddle their way toward humiliation, bankruptcy, and death -- not to mention the odd triumph. The third offering ...
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Theatre in Review: Much Ado About Nothing (New York Shakespeare Festival/Delacorte Theatre)
"Was ever woman in this humour woo'd? Was ever woman in this humour won?" The words are from Richard III but they apply perfectly to the screwball hilarity spun by Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe in Jack O'Brien' ...
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Theatre in Review: Pat Kirkwood is Angry (59E59/Brits Off Broadway Festival)
Pat Kirkwood had plenty of reason to be angry: In 1948, while performing at the London Hippodrome, she accepted an invitation to have dinner with the Duke of Edinburgh in a Mayfair restaurant. This was not the done thing, to say the least; ...
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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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