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  Theatre in Review: Romeo and Juliet (Classic Stage Company)
I really hate to state the obvious, but these are confused times, so here goes: If you're going to stage Shakespeare's plays, you will need actors who can handle his verse. Got it?
This seemingly irrefutable proposition is apparently big ...
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Theatre in Review: The Model Apartment (Primary Stages/59E59)
Donald Margulies has called The Model Apartment his "problem child," meaning that it didn't get much attention in its 1995 debut at Primary Stages. The production was hobbled by the sudden departure of a lead actor, ...
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Theatre in Review: Two Point Oh (The Active Theatre/59E59)
Marriage is a virtual thing in Two Point Oh, a clever, if superficial, thriller about our brave new world of digital technology. How brave? Well, playwright Jeffrey Jackson's protagonist, Elliot Leeds, is a virtual ...
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Theatre in Review: Bronx Bombers (Primary Stages at The Duke on 42nd Street)
Playwright Eric Simonson fields an all-star lineup of baseball greats in Bronx Bombers, a whimsical, sentimental comedy about the New York Yankees. Following Lombardi and Magic/Bird, this is Simonson's ...
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Theatre in Review: Lady Day (Little Shubert Theatre)
The best thing about this potted biography of Billie Holiday is that it lets us spend a couple of hours with Dee Dee Bridgewater. A fabulous jazz singer with Broadway chops to boot, she thoroughly nails the signature Holiday ...
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Theatre in Review: Bad Jews (Roundabout/Laura Pels Theatre)
In her young career, Tracee Chimo has shown a distinct knack for playing tough customers. As a skeptical drama student in Circle Mirror Transformation, the meanest of the mean girls in Bachelorette, and a hard-headed ...
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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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