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  Theatre in Review: Harbor (Primary Stages)
Robert Frost's observation that "home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in" is put to the acid test in Harbor. Playwright Chad Beguelin plots a fractious family reunion, throwing together two ...
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Theatre in Review: I Forgive You, Ronald Reagan (Theatre Row)
And what does Ronald Reagan need forgiveness for? You may have your own list of grievances, but Ray, the protagonist of John S. Anastasi's play, blames him for the loss of his career. Ray was an air traffic controller in 1981, when ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts 2013, Series A (59E59)
Dyspepsia is the order of the day at Series A of this year's Summer Shorts, and that's the good news. The first of the summer's two programs of one-acts is buoyed by a pair of barbed comedies that show their characters at their ...
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Theatre in Review: Dancing on Nails (Theatre 80)
A pair of improbable, and interlocking, dreams lies at the heart of Dancing on Nails. One: Sam Heisler, the 50-ish proprietor of a Greenwich Village hardware store, falls in love, for the first time in his life, with his ...
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Theatre in Review: The Capables (The Gym at Judson)
The Capables makes a startling impression the instant one enters the theatre. The playing area is covered with mountains of things: flags, stuffed animals, trophies, clocks, artificial flowers, dolls, videotapes, colorfully ...
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Theatre in Review: Storyville (York Theatre Company)
You'd think a musical called Storyville might have a better grasp of, well, story. There is enormous potential buried inside this material, but in its current incarnation, it is too scattered, too focused on nonessentials to ...
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Theatre in Review: Nobody Loves You (Second Stage)
Suddenly, the hot theatrical topic is reality television, what with Rod McLachlan' Good Television recently concluding a well-received run at Atlantic Theatre and Jay Stull's The Capables about to open Off Off Broadway. Both ...
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Theatre in Review: The Designated Mourner (Public Theater/Theatre for a New Audience)
The Designated Mourner reminded me of the old Monty Python sketch in which Neil Innes, playing a Bob Dylan-style folk balladeer, tells the audience, "I've suffered for my art. Now it's your turn." ...
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Theatre in Review: The Explorers Club (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
"Science! Science! Hail to Science!" So sing the assemblage of great Victorian minds convened by playwright Nell Benjamin at the beginning of The Explorers Club. However, Benjamin wastes no time in making clear that ...
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Theatre in Review: The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin (Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre)
The problem with Tom Durnin isn't that he disappeared; it's that he is back, thinking that he can pick up where he left off, five years before. Tom, a disbarred lawyer, is a small-time version of Bernard Madoff; having ensnared his family ...
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Theatre in Review: The Two-Character Play (New World Stages)
The ad copy for The Two-Character Play states, "Reason and reality have left the building." They said it; I didn't. A product of Tennessee Williams' self-described "stoned age," when critical acclaim and commercial ...
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Theatre in Review: Rantoul and Die (The Amoralists/Cherry Lane Theatre)
Whatever else you think about Rantoul and Die, you'll be glad you met Callie. The preternaturally perky manager of a Dairy Queen, she is more than happy to tend to the basket cases who populate Mark Roberts' play, just ...
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Theatre in Review: Unbroken Circle (St. Luke's Theatre)
Unbroken Circle takes place just after a funeral, but, as it happens, the death of a loved one is the least of the characters' problems. (And, as we learn, the term "loved one" is strictly honorific.) What starts out as an ...
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Theatre in Review: The Comedy of Errors (Public Theater/Delacorte Theater)
Most summers, the Delacorte is a temple of Shakespeare, but these nights the real tribute is being paid to the gods of comedy, thanks to Daniel Sullivan's lovingly hoked-up staging of The Comedy of Errors. Bardolators ...
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Theatre in Review: Venice (The Public Theater)
Sometimes a theatre's programming creates the most unfortunate juxtapositions, a phenomenon that is happening right now at the Public: Having opened Here Lies Love -- a mordant, inventive, disco-flavored musical that charts the rise ...
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Theatre in Review: The Silver Cord (Peccadillo Theater Company/Theatre at St. Clement's)
"I say this about children: Have them. Love them. Leave them be." This eminently sensible advice, voiced by one of the characters in The Silver Cord, is most assuredly not in practice on stage at St. Clement's these nights. ...
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Theatre in Review: Cornelius (59E59)
An almost entirely forgotten selection from the J. B. Priestley catalog -- even with Ralph Richardson in the title role, it eked out a mere seven weeks in its 1935 West End debut -- Cornelius is suddenly being ...
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Theatre in Review: A Picture of Autumn (Mint Theatre Company)
It's conventional wisdom that the Mint Theatre Company rescues lost plays; more recently, it has been salvaging playwrights. Most prominent among these has been the forgotten Teresa Deevy; A Picture of Autumn ...
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Theatre in Review: The Little Mermaid (Paper Mill Playhouse)
The Little Mermaid certainly wasn't Disney Theatrical's finest hour on Broadway -- at the time, it looked more like the firm's last gasp -- but it has found a sprightly afterlife at Paper Mill Playhouse. Based on the animated ...
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Theatre in Review: Far From Heaven (Playwrights Horizons)
Each era gets the stars it requires, and to my mind Kelli O'Hara represents the best of what today's musical theatre has to offer. It goes without saying that she is gifted with a big, creamy voice that wrings every available bit of ...
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