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  Theatre in Review: Are You There, McPhee? (McCarter Theatre Center)
In a promotional interview for Are You There, McPhee?, John Guare says, "It's the kind of play I like. We turn on the television to see that which we're going to know and we come to the theatre to see that which we don't know ...
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Theatre in Review: Man and Superman (Irish Repertory Theatre)
The Irish Repertory Theatre's production of Man and Superman is the theatrical equivalent of one of those package tours that drag tourists through six countries in seven days. There's time only for the most famous highlights, ...
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Theatre in Review: Leap of Faith (St. James Theatre)
The word on Leap of Faith, which got mixed-to-negative reviews, is that it is sentimental and predictable. The titles The Music Man and 110 in the Shade were bandied about in many a review, and for good reason. ...
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Theatre in Review: Lonely, I'm Not (Second Stage Theatre)
Paul Weitz wastes no time in letting us know that Porter, the hero of his new comedy, Lonely, I'm Not, is a first-class basket case. He wakes up in his dreary-looking apartment and heads to the local coffee shop; he ...
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Theatre in Review: Nice Work If You Can Get It (Imperial Theatre)
In Nice Work If You Can Get It, director/ choreographer Kathleen Marshall and company have set out to brew a Jazz Age cocktail with a bathtub gin kick. If the result is more like a Shirley Temple, that's not entirely ...
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Theatre in Review: The Columnist (Manhattan Theatre Club at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
At this time of year, producers, aiming for awards glory, roll out their big guns, unleashing stage-devouring performances and musicals top-heavy with digital visual thrills. At moments like these, it's important to remember the value of ...
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Theatre in Review: Ghost (Lunt-Fontanne Theatre)
A sign outside the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre quotes a reviewer from The Faster Times, saying, "Ghost is the future of theatre!" If that's true, dystopia is imminent.
Here at Lighting&Sound America, we are usually ...
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Theatre in Review: A Streetcar Named Desire (Broadhurst Theatre)
If you're going to get on that streetcar named Desire, you've got to ride it to the end of the line. Half-measures simply won't do. There are a great many fine things about Emily Mann's production of the Tennessee Williams ...
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Theatre in Review: An Early History of Fire (The New Group at Theatre Row)
David Rabe has been absent from the theatre recently, devoting his time instead to writing novels. Possibly as a result of this experience, his new play, An Early History of Fire, has a digressive quality, a ...
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Theatre in Review: Pratfalls (Ground Up Productions at Abingdon Theatre Complex)
Every so often, I hear someone wonder why there are so few romantic comedies in the theatre anymore. The answer is a complicated one, but one simple answer is that such plays -- so airy and effortless-seeming when they work -- are much ...
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Theatre in Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Classic Stage Company)
If you're going to stage one of Shakespeare's plays, you ought to pay attention to the words. This may seem like an obvious statement, but it may be news to the crew down at Classic Stage Company, where A Midsummer Night's Dream
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Theatre in Review: Eavesdropping on History (Barefoot Theatre at Cherry Lane Studio)
The horror of the Holocaust reaches across three generations in Eavesdropping on History. Rivka Bekerman-Greenberg is a psychoanalyst and first-time playwright, and her drama -- about a survivor of Auschwitz and the ...
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Theatre in Review: One Man, Two Guvnors (Music Box Theatre)
That James Corden really is a clown.
This is meant as the highest of praise. Our contemporary theatre does a great many things well, but it lags behind in the regular production of outsized comic talents; there's a pronounced ...
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Theatre in Review: Don't Dress for Dinner (Roundabout Theatre Company at American Airlines Theatre)
Well, it's no Boeing-Boeing. In 2008, the director Matthew Warchus, aided by Mark Rylance, Christine Baranski, and a supremely gifted cast managed to inject some jet fuel into that antique vehicle; now somebody at Roundabout decided ...
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Theatre in Review: The Lyons (Cort Theatre)
Nicky Silver has imagined a spectacularly dysfunctional family named The Lyons and it's our good fortune that Linda Lavin is the queen of the pride. She is Rita Lyons, nightmare wife and monster mother, a Chanel-clad ...
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Theatre in Review: Clybourne Park (Longacre Theatre)
Oscar Hammerstein said you've got to be carefully taught to hate and fear, but in the 21st century we know better, or think we do. Words can be weapons, we tell ourselves -- and it's a sin to use racial and sexual epithets. Publicly, we're ...
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Theatre in Review: In Masks Outrageous and Austere (Culture Project)
Most of the characters who populate the cast of Tennessee Williams' In Masks Outrageous and Austere don't know where they are, geographically, morally, or psychologically. In a way, this is appropriate, because David ...
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Theatre in Review: 4000 Miles (Lincoln Center Theatre)
Mary Louise Wilson doesn't just have great timing; she breathes it. As the heroine of Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles, she turns the simplest remarks -- "I was just making conversation," "You're in Manhattan," and "She's ...
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Theatre in Review: You'd Better Sit Down: Takes from My Parents' Divorce (Civilians at Flea Theatre)
"I hope this doesn't send you, you know, to the psychiatrist," a man tells his son in You'd Better Sit Down: Tales from My Parents' Divorce, but by then surely that boat has sailed for those who helped to create this ...
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Theatre in Review: Evita (Marquis Theatre)
Eva Peron has proven to be a polarizing figure in death as in life -- so why not the actress who plays her? The Broadway revival of Evita has sent show fans into a tizzy, endlessly debating, in chat rooms and bars all over ...
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