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  Theatre in Review: Into the Woods (Delacorte Theatre)
In our revival-happy world, the distance between productions is getting shorter and shorter. Broadway has seen A Streetcar Named Desire three times in the last 20 years. This season, we're getting Cyrano de Bergerac and Gl ...
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Theatre in Review: Bullet for Adolf (New World Stages)
Surely this has happened to you: You're somewhere -- say a bar or a party -- and you find yourself talking to a pair of acquaintances. You don't know them well, but they've been friends forever. They tell you a story from days gone by; the ...
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Theatre in Review: The Last Smoker in America (Westside Theatre)
Nicotine addicts who, in the depths of winter, huddle outside Manhattan bars, desperate to get a fix, might get a laugh or two out of The Last Smoker in America. After all, they truly, deeply understand the meaning of ...
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Theatre in Review: New Girl in Town (Irish Repertory Theatre)
Bob Merrill and Eugene O'Neill; for a little while in the 1950s, they made quite a team. O'Neill was dead, of course, but Merrill had a good thing going, turning O'Neill's works into musicals. Take Me Along was quite ...
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Theatre in Review: Dogfight (Second Stage Theatre)
Dogfight is a show with many problems, but they do not include dishonesty or lack of craft. On the contrary; the librettist, Peter Duchan, and the songwriters, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, are almost hell ...
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Theatre in Review: 7th Monarch (Theatre Row)
Every so often, in a nostalgic mood, I lament the fact that nobody produces crime dramas anymore. Having grown up on the likes of Sleuth and Deathtrap -- and having pored over the film of Witness for the Prosecution so ...
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Theatre in Review: Closer Than Ever (York Theatre)
Given the rapidly receding level of craft in our modern musical theatre, I'm beginning to think we should keep Closer Than Ever on permanent display. If we did, aspiring composers and lyricists could study the incomparable ...
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Theatre in Review: Harvey (Roundabout Theatre Company at Studio 54)
Well, hello there, Harvey; long time, no see. It may not seem like it, but Roundabout has taken a considerable risk in putting on Mary Chase's war horse, which racked up no fewer than 1,775 performances between 1944 ...
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Theatre in Review: 3C (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre)
What if there was a revisionist version of Three's Company, in which Jack, the John Ritter character, was a tormented, closeted gay; Chrissy (Suzanne Somers to you) was promiscuous, thanks to a history of sexual abuse; and Janet (Joy ...
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Theatre in Review: Medieval Play (Signature Theatre)
It may be an early candidate for worst play of the season, but Medieval Play has one of the best openings in town. A lush red velvet curtain -- part of Walt Spangler's expansive and devilishly clever set design -- ...
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Theatre in Review: As You Like It (Delacorte Theatre)
Rosalind, meet Lily Rabe; Lily Rabe, meet Rosalind. Then again, introductions are hardly necessary. Ever since she stepped onto the Delacorte stage in The Merchant of Venice two summers ago, it's been clear that she was fated ...
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Theatre in Review: This is Fiction (InViolet Repertory Theater Company at the Cherry Lane Theatre)
At the beginning of This is Fiction, Amy, the heroine, is learning that attaining one's dream can be a nightmare. A writer who has spent years grinding out magazine articles on such searching, world-changing topics as "How ...
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Theatre in Review: Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep)
The director Sam Gold has said that his ambition was to create a production of Uncle Vanya that retained the intimacy of a living room reading. To achieve this, he has built a small house inside Soho Rep. Andrew ...
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Theatre in Review: Love Goes to Press (Mint Theatre Company)
"They run this lousy war on sex appeal!" So says one of the beleaguered males left blindsided by the heroines of Love Goes to Press. Obeying the write-what-you-know rule, Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles, who ...
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Theatre in Review: Tiny Dynamite (59E59)
Somehow, one feels Abi Morgan must have viewed Francois Truffaut's Jules et Jim several times before writing Tiny Dynamite, a story of friendship, triangular romance, and suicide. In any case, an air of romantic ...
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Theatre in Review: Rapture, Blister, Burn (Playwrights Horizons)
"That's a wonderful toast! Biting yet generous," says one of the characters in Rapture, Blister, Burn, as martinis are hoisted. It's also a pretty accurate description of Gina Gionfriddo's approach to her characters. ...
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Theatre in Review: Once on This Island (Paper Mill Playhouse)
If you're a fan -- as I am -- of the scores of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, this is something of an event -- a chance to revisit, after two decades, their most successful show after Ragtime. But the real news here ...
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Theatre in Review: Escape (Creation Production Company at La MaMa)
Everybody in Susan Mosakowski's comic triptych is in need of, well, escape. There's Harry Houdini III, grandson of you-know-who, who works hard at getting out of a straitjacket, a set of chains, a giant milk can, and a coffin, with ...
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Theatre in Review: Murder in the First (59E59)
Musicals based on films are a dime a dozen, but plays drawn from cinematic source material are exceedingly rare. This alone makes Murder in the First an object of curiosity. Dan Gordon has adapted his own screenplay, ...
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Theatre in Review: Food and Fadwa (Noor Theatre/New York Theatre Workshop)
In what may be its most daring aesthetic gambit yet, New York Theatre Workshop -- a company that puts a premium on experimentation -- is presenting a thoroughly conventional, naturalistic domestic comedy-drama. The innovation is in the ...
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