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  Theatre in Review: An Iliad (New York Theatre Workshop)
The old saw, that all you need for great theatre is an actor and some powerful words, barely even gets lip service nowadays, addicted as we are to hydraulic lifts, flying rigs, and vast LED walls. But the truth of it is brought home with ...
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Theatre in Review: Painting Churches (Keen Company at Theatre Row)
Is there a more fraught relationship than that of parent and child? Most American playwrights would have it so, given the onslaught of family dramas that open each season. (Years ago, when I read plays for a theatre company, I was ...
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Theatre in Review: Beyond the Horizon (Irish Repertory Theatre)
The word on Eugene O'Neill is that his early plays -- really, the first 30 years or so of his career -- consist largely of unproduceable one-acts and arty experiments in the expressionistic spirit of the times, and it's his twilight ...
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Theatre in Review: Assistance (Playwrights Horizons)
"Working for Daniel is like living the last 30 minutes of Goodfellas over and over again." So says one of the office slaves who make up the cast of Assistance. We never see Daniel Weisinger, nor do we ever learn just ...
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Theatre in Review: Rutherford & Son (Mint Theatre)
"There's not a scrap of love in the whole house," comments one of the bitterly unhappy members of a Northern England industrial dynasty in Rutherford & Son. The play's title is also the name of the business -- a glass factory ...
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Theatre in Review: Galileo (Classic Stage Company)
Timing is everything; sometimes, a show lands at just the right moment. In the last couple of weeks, we've had the American Catholic bishops sparring with the Obama Administration over contraception. And we've had Rick Santorum, so ...
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Theatre in Review: Call Me Waldo (Working Theatre at June Havoc Theatre)
A romantic comedy about transcendentalism? That's a new one. Don't misunderstand me: If you attend Call Me Waldo, you won't see Louisa May Alcott and Emily Dickinson having a catfight over Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, nor can ...
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Theatre in Review: Blood Knot (Signature Theatre)
It's a funny thing about Athol Fugard. You'd think that his earlier plays, most of which deal head-on with the evils of South Africa's apartheid system, might seem a little dated, especially when measured against his later, more ...
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Theatre in Review: CQ/CX (Atlantic Theatre at the Peter Norton Space)
One of the most sizzling journalistic scandals of recent times is brought to life in CQ/CX. Gabe McKinley, a former reporter for The New York Times, takes on the case of Jayson Blair, the gifted young reporter ...
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Theatre in Review: A Map of Virtue (13P/Fourth Street Theatre)
Erin Courtney certainly packs plenty into the 70-minute running time of A Map of Virtue. There are strange coincidences, surprise meetings, complex back stories, and a brutal act of vandalism. For the first third, the ...
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Theatre in Review: Myths and Hymns (Prospect Theatre Company)
The bad news is, ever since winning his Tony for The Light in the Piazza, Adam Guettel has sadly been MIA. In a recent interview, he indicated that he had been working on a musical based on The Princess Bride, a ...
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Theatre in Review: The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G (Ma-Yi Theatre/Vampire Cowboys/Theatre Row)
I know that we live in the era of all things meta, but there's got to be a limit. Consider the case of The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G. Ostensibly the intrigue-filled tale of Hung, a Vietnamese-American man who returns ...
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Theatre in Review: How I Learned to Drive (Second Stage)
Even in the current revival-happy climate, in which plays from the mid to late 1990s are seen as fair game for a second look, it's not easy to justify a new production of How I Learned to Drive. The original opened as ...
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Theatre in Review: Tokio Confidential (Atlantic Stage Two)
Conviction may be the most underrated of theatrical values. As masters from Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams to Stephen Sondheim - all of whom have built stories around cannibalism, for example - could confirm, it's not just the story you ...
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Theatre in Review: Rx (Primary Stages/59E59)
In Rx, Kate Fodor latches onto a subject that practically screams for satire: how the pharmaceutical industry floods the media with smiley-faced ads for drugs with unpronounceable names designed to treat diseases you've never ...
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Theatre in Review: Psycho Therapy (Cherry Lane Theatre)
Actors have to eat; I bring up this blindingly obvious point to explain why Angelica Page, Jeffrey Carlson, Jan Leslie Harding, and Laurence Lau -- talented people all -- are starring in Psycho Therapy. There is ...
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Theatre in Review: Look Back in Anger (Roundabout/Laura Pels Theatre)
God help the playwright whose work is described as "groundbreaking" or "revolutionary;" its initial impact may be enormous, but its shelf life is another matter altogether. A good example is Look Back in Anger, in which Joh ...
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Theatre in Review: Ionescopade (York Theatre)
Can the Theatre of the Absurd be set to music? That's the proposition Ionescopade sets out to test by paying tribute to the works of Eugène Ionesco, who helped get the absurdist ball rolling with such works as The ...
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Theatre in Review: Botanica (3LD Art & Technology Center)
Somebody alert Rick Santorum: First, we decadent New Yorkers allowed gay marriage; now there's an actor on stage here, having sex with plants! We've skipped right over the bestiality phase that Santorum, clutching his rosary, promised ...
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Theatre in Review: Wit (Manhattan Theatre Club)
Gravitas is a very special quality. Hard to define, it's a combination of presence, personality, and an ineffable ability to suggest a lifetime of experience, a richness of character, and a certain intellectual heft. Not every actor has it ...
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