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  Theatre in Review: The Film Society (Keen Company)
When The Film Society opened in 1988, starring the fast-rising Nathan Lane, it announced the 27-year-old Jon Robin Baitz as a playwright of uncommon promise. I didn't see the play, which is one reason I'm grateful to ...
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Theatre in Review: Romeo and Juliet (Richard Rodgers Theatre)
The next time I start to complain about some oddball high-concept Shakespeare production, I will think of David Leveaux's Broadway staging of Romeo and Juliet; that will shut me up. This one is a real head-scratcher -- not ...
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Theatre in Review: Natural Affection (The Actors Company Theatre/Theatre Row)
We're lucky to have the likes of The Actors Company Theatre, The Mint Theater, and Keen Company, all of which have made it their mission to curate our theatrical past. It wasn't that long ago that no producing organization in New York ...
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Theatre in Review: Arguendo (Elevator Repair Service/Public Theater)
An exotic dancer, surrounded by reporters, keeps repeating the same inane talking point about the beauty of her career. ("I'm sending a message of, of sensuality, there's nothing wrong with the nude female body, I am proud of ...
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Theatre in Review: Philip Goes Forth (Mint Theatre Company)
The action of Philip Goes Forth turns on the question of whether or not young Philip Eldridge should move to New York and become a playwright. Fair enough; the trouble is, playwright George Kelly provides a definitive ...
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Theatre in Review: The Old Friends (Signature Theatre)
The great thing about Horton Foote is you can never pin him down. His critics -- and even some of his friends -- like to pigeonhole him as a cracker barrel Chekhov who spins sentimental tales of simple country folk, their dreams ...
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Theatre in Review: stop.reset (Signature Theatre Company)
That our lives have been altered almost beyond recognition by the advent of digital technology is beyond a doubt; that Regina Taylor has anything to say about this phenomenon is not at all clear. In any case, she has written stop ...
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Theatre in Review: You Never Can Tell (Pearl Theatre Company/Gingold Theatrical Group)
Summer is waning, but a holiday air prevails at the Pearl, where You Never Can Tell is casting an impudent and amused eye at the follies of thoroughly reasonable people forced into thoroughly unreasonable situations thanks to the ...
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Theatre in Review: Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play (Playwrights Horizons)
What if the world ended and only pop culture survived? That's the premise of Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play, a thoroughly original, if not to say bizarre, black comedy that, before it jumps the shark, provides a distinctive ...
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Theatre in Review: Fetch Clay, Make Man (New York Theatre Workshop)
Credit Will Power for unearthing one of the odder pairings in modern American history; credit him further for making it the stuff of powerful drama. As strange as it seems, Muhammad Ali, whose unapologetically assertive personality ...
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Theatre in Review: The Recommendation (Flea Theatre)
Friendship is many things in The Recommendation -- patronage, commerce, and blackmail, among others -- but it is rarely truly friendship. That's because the three characters in Jonathan Caren's cracklingly paced, ...
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Theatre in Review: The Hatmaker's Wife (Playwright's Realm/Peter Jay Sharp Theatre)
If theatrical whimsy is to you the equivalent of one part Karo syrup and two parts castor oil, then you may want to avoid The Hatmaker's Wife, which should come with a red band on the program, with "Warning: Fable Ahead" ...
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Theatre in Review: The Hill Town Plays (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre)
The new season kicks off with an extraordinarily ambitious project that is both an enormous gift to a playwright and a major gamble -- for her and the producing organization: Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre has chosen to simultaneously ...
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Theatre in Review: Why We Left Brooklyn (Theatre Accident and Blue Coyote/Fourth Street Theatre)
In Why We Left Brooklyn, Matthew Freeman has done a radical thing: He has written a three-act play. This may not sound like much to you, but let me assure you that this format, once a staple of contemporary drama, went the ...
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Theatre in Review: The Awake (kef theatrical productions/59E59)
The lead characters of The Awake have two things in common. One is obvious; the other isn't. The obvious thing: Each of them is living a nightmare in which the line between reality and fantasy has collapsed. Nate, a young ...
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Theatre in Review: The Cheaters Club (The Amoralists/Abrons Arts Center)
The company known as The Amoralists, according to its mission statement, "produces work of no moral judgment. Dedicated to an honest expression of the American condition, our ensemble explores complex characters of moral ambiguity, ...
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Theatre in Review: First Date (Longacre Theatre)
The one thing First Date has going for it is that it marks Zachary Levi's first date with Broadway; something tells me it's the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Cast as Aaron, a diffident financier trying to get ...
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Theatre in Review: Soul Doctor (Circle in the Square Theatre)
We've had bio musicals, songbook musicals, and jukebox musicals; we've now entered the era of the halo musical, in which music-industry characters are not so much dramatized as canonized. Last season, we got Motown, which revealed ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts 2013, Series B (59E59)
Each series of Summer Shorts, the annual one-act play festival, offers a lesson. In the case of this year's Series B, it is this: Sometimes even the thinnest and most well-worn premise can be invigorated by a writer with an eye for ...
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Theatre in Review: Love's Labour's Lost (Public Theater/Delacorte Theater)
In 1971, the Public Theater had a big success with Two Gentlemen of Verona -- not the Shakespeare play, but a kicky, thoroughly of-the-moment musical version. John Guare's adaptation preserved the verse dialogue and ...
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