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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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Theatre in Review: Yosemite (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre)
Yosemite begins with a young man digging a hole downstage right. It's pretty big, but it isn't nearly as deep as the one the playwright, Daniel Talbott, has dug for himself. After establishing a creepily compelling ...
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Theatre in Review: The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (Richard Rodgers Theatre)
Thanks to the storm center of controversy that enveloped it even before its Boston tryout, The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess has become the hot-button show of the season (after Spider-Man, of course). The complaints began ...
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Theatre in Review: Stopped Bridge of Dreams (La MaMa)
To those of you who think of projections as the cutting edge, I give you John Jeserun, who has been exploring the intersection between live performance and video for three decades. (Among other things, he's the author of Chang in ...
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Theatre in Review: The Fall to Earth (InProximity Theatre Company/59E59)
The best thing about The Fall to Earth is the chance to catch up with Deborah Hedwall, an actress who doesn't turn up all that often. The loss is ours; she's responsible for two of the more unforgettable performances ...
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Theatre in Review: The Picture Box (Negro Ensemble Company/Theatre Row)
Did you ever go through the family albums of someone you don't really know? Not much fun, was it? That's the experience I had watching The Picture Box, an 80-minute trip down memory lane for some very thinly drawn characters.< ...
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Theatre in Review: The Road to Mecca (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre)
You won't be surprised to hear that Rosemary Harris, Carla Gugino, and Jim Dale are doing fine, subtle, quietly revelatory work in The Road to Mecca. With these three, how could it be otherwise? They're enough ...
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Theatre in Review: Leo (Theatre Row)
Recently, it's begun to seem as if the theatre is undergoing a video takeover. Only a few seasons ago, the use of any projected imagery seemed like an expensive add-on, to be used only when strictly necessary. But the march of technology ...
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Theatre in Review: Outside People (Vineyard/Naked Angels)
If nothing else, this season has given us a new dramatic genre: the East-West culture clash comedy. Outside People will inevitably be compared to David Henry Hwang's Chinglish, and for good reason. Both plays feature ...
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Theatre in Review: Sontag: Reborn (Under the Radar Festival/Public Theatre)
Sontag: Reborn begins, startlingly, on a note of unintended comedy. We see a video image, in extreme close-up, of Moe Angelos, the piece's sole perfomer, as the older Susan Sontag, that mane of hair crossed by a ...
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Theatre in Review: The Bee (Under the Radar/Japan House)
One hostage situation multiplies into two in The Bee, a black comedy-horror parable about man's addiction to violence. Hideki Noda's script, based on a story by Yasutaka Tsuitsui, is a bipolar exercise in ...
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Theatre in Review: Chimera (HERE/Under the Radar)
The things one learns at the theatre -- for example, there's chimerism, which is the state of having two different sets of DNA in one body. (I didn't believe in it until I Googled the term and found numerous references.) Jennifer Samuels ...
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Theatre in Review: Goodbar (Under the Radar/Public Theater)
Does anyone remember Looking for Mr. Goodbar? Until a few nights ago, I would have said no. Judith Rossner's blockbuster novel, published in 1975, tracks the progress of a troubled young woman through New York's singles-bar ...
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Theatre in Review: Close Up Space (Manhattan Theatre Club/New York City Center)
It must be the dream of every young playwright to have a production at a venue such as Manhattan Theatre Club. Suddenly, all those out-of-reach amenities are yours -- a name cast, a first-class director, a design team with the ...
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Theatre in Review: Lysistrata Jones (Walter Kerr Theatre)
The good news is that Lysistrata Jones has made the leap to Broadway, nicely fluffed up, with almost all of its charm intact. The not-so-good news is the show doesn't put it best foot forward at the top, a misstep that ...
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