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  Theatre in Review: Massacre (Sing to Your Children) (Rattlestick Theatre)
There's trouble afoot when the most interesting character in a play is the murder victim, but that's the case with Massacre (Sing to Your Children).His name is Joe, and he is apparently the evil boss of a New Hampshire town. ( ...
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Theatre in Review: A Slow Air (59E59)
Meet Athol and Morna, the two halves of the fractured family portrait that constitutes David Harrower's A Slow Air. They're siblings, close in (middle) age; she lives in Edinburgh and he in Glasgow, although they may ...
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Theatre in Review: Magic/Bird (Longacre Theatre)
Attention sports fans: Magic/Bird is a slam-dunk entertainment, packing a few laughs, a few tears, and plenty of basketball lore into a fast-moving 90 minutes. Attention everyone else: The theatre district is packed with fine ...
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Theatre in Review: End of the Rainbow (Belasco Theatre)
"I could throw up in their laps and they'd still think I was glamorous." So says Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow, a play designed to put that proposition to the severest of tests. It's doubtful there's another show in town ...
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Theatre in Review: Regrets (Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center Stage I)
Matt Charman is a very imaginative playwright -- possibly too imaginative at times. In Regrets, he asks the audience to accept a great many things, seemingly unaware that the smart playwright doles out his ...
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Theatre in Review: The Best Man (Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre)
Some critics have dismissed The Best Man as a potboiler. To them, I say, what's wrong with that? Not every play need be a revelation of the playwright's soul, if he or she has a cracking story to tell. Gore Vidal is ...
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Theatre in Review: The Morini Strad (Primary Stages at 59E59)
Mary Beth Peil has been on a roll lately. She is responsible for many a crackling confrontation as Julianna Margulies' imperious, meddling mother-in-law on the excellent CBS series The Good Wife. Earlier this season, slipping ...
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Theatre in Review: Newsies (Nederlander Theatre)
"I don't need the limp to sell papers; I've got personality!" So says Crutchy, a gimpy-legged newspaper boy in Newsies -- and, oddly enough, he could be speaking about Disney Theatrical's new musical, too. ...
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Theatre in Review: Jesus Christ Superstar (Neil Simon Theatre)
Cards on the table: I am not now, nor have I ever been, a fan of Jesus Christ Superstar. Forty years ago, it struck me as a slick and empty enterprise, and the ensuing decades have done nothing to change that impression. At the time ...
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Theatre in Review: Now. Here. This. (Vineyard Theatre)
Even its many admirers had to admit that [title of show] -- the 2008 musical about the writing of a musical -- occasionally got too self-reflexive for its own good. Charming as it was, it's main achievement was to prove that there ...
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Theatre in Review: Death of a Salesman (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)
If anyone at this late date doubts the power of Death of a Salesman, they need look no further than the current Broadway revival. Mike Nichols' production combines searing insights with some questionable choices, but ...
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Theatre in Review: Once (Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre)
When Once opened Off Broadway in December, it immediately became clear, given the critical and audience reaction, that a Broadway transfer was in the offing. But would this singular, small-scale, and deceptively casual fable ...
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Theatre in Review: Lost in Yonkers (The Actors Company Theatre at Theatre Row)
I am very happy to report that the folks at TACT have mastered the art of speaking Neil Simon. This no small achievement, even for a company that has proved itself adept at the diverse works of Alan Ayckbourn, Sidney Howard, and T. ...
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Theatre in Review: The Big Meal (Playwrights Horizons)
The Big Meal begins with a chance meeting between Sam, a young man, and Nicole, a waitress in a restaurant, and it ends, several decades later, with us contemplating the world they made together. It's a 90-minute mini-epic ...
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Theatre in Review: No Place to Go (Joe's Pub)
You think you have job troubles? At the beginning of No Place to Go, Ethan Lipton announces that the company that has employed him for the better part of ten years is relocating -- to Mars. It's purely an economic decision, ...
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Theatre in Review: Flight (DR2 Theatre)
In Flight, Michel Wallerstein takes two hot-button issues -- Alzheimer's disease and the Holocaust -- and subjects them to dismayingly ham-handed treatment. There's a fascinating story inside this material, but it ...
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Theatre in Review: The Maids (Red Bull Theatre at Theatre at St. Clement's)
To drag or not to drag? That is the question. Jean Genet intended that the three females who make up the cast of The Maids be played by men. Louis Jouvet, his director, balked, and the 1947 premiere featured a trio of ...
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Theatre in Review: Tribes (Barrow Street Theatre)
Nina Raine is far better known in London than New York, although I suspect that is about to change, for she has one of the greatest gifts a playwright can have: She can take what looks like a familiar situation and, through the ...
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Theatre in Review: The Lady from Dubuque (Pershing Square Theatre Center)
How did we ever get Edward Albee so wrong? His status as one of our greatest living playwrights is now so secure that it's easy to forget how, not so long ago, he was written off as written out. Such early-'80s works as Lolita
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Theatre in Review: Hurt Village (Pershing Square Signature Center)
The worst thing you can do with a young playwright is rush to judgment. Consider the case of Katori Hall; after she made her Broadway debut last fall with The Mountaintop, a rather too whimsical fantasy about Martin Luther ...
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