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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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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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