|
  Theatre in Review: Kin (Playwrights Horizons)
Kin focuses on the long-term romantic relationship of a couple named Anna and Sean -- but, except for a brief and minor encounter at the halfway point, we never see them together until nearly the end of Bathsheba Doran's ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Palace Theatre)
When they work at all, jukebox musicals function less as works of narrative and more as parties. Usually outfitted with the feeblest of librettos, they prefer to coast on their playlists of golden oldies, which tend to be enough to get ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Hello Again (Transport Group)
Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde has been adapted endlessly, on stage and in film, but surely there is no more haunting version of it than Hello Again. Schnitzler conceived a sexual roundelay of interlinked lovers as a ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Spy Garbo (Affinity Company Theatre/3-Legged Dog)
Joan Pujol Garcia is surely the most fascinating historical figure that you've never heard of. Operating under the code name Garbo during World War II, the Spanish spy seduced his masters with a fantastic array of manufactured data, ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Cactus Flower (Westside Arts Theatre)
Do you remember sex comedy? If so, you're showing your age. Between, say, The Moon is Blue, in 1951, and Last of the Red Hot Lovers, in 1970, no season went by without half a dozen or more such examples of this now-defunct ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Peter and the Starcatcher (New York Theatre Workshop)
"Are we quite done with the hugging and the learning?" This question is posed near the end of Peter and the Starcatcher; it's meant as a gag line, but it goes right to the heart of the identity crisis plaguing the new ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Good People (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
David Lindsay-Abaire has turned out to be one of the theatre's most intriguing multiple personalities. Establishing himself as the author of quirky comedies such as Fuddy Meers and Wonder of the World, he then threw ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Timon of Athens (The Public Theater)
Sometimes I think Shakespeare's problem plays aren't so problematic after all. Take Measure for Measure: For decades, if not centuries, it was dismissed as a tangle of ill-fitting plot developments -- until the culture wars of the ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Hallway Trilogy (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre)
Having spent nearly five hours in one day taking in The Hallway Trilogy, I can say with total confidence that it is a trilogy about... a hallway. I'd like to be more specific, but I'm at a loss. The program notes suggest ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Invasion! (The Play Company at Walkerspace)
When you're in the hands of totally confident, committed theatre artists -- well, there's nothing like it. Invasion! begins with a stunning coup de théâtre -- on pain of death, I wouldn't reveal the details -- that, at the performance I ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Small Craft Warnings (Mother of Invention/Theatre Row)
It's going to be a good year for Tennessee Williams completists. This is the playwright's centennial, and already three of his lesser-known works -- by which I mean flops - are on the boards in New York. The Roundabout has < ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: A World Apart (Creation Production Company at the Flea Theatre)
A nun and a priest teeter on the edge of a forbidden love in A World Apart, a work that is distinguished by its utter lack of reality. Alarm bells start ringing about two minutes into Susan Mosakowski's new drama, ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Compulsion (The Public Theatre)
In Compulsion, Rinne Groff takes one of the juiciest cultural imbroglios of the 20th century -- namely the controversy surrounding the US publication, and stage adaptation, of The Diary of Anne Frank. It's a gripping ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: A Perfect Future (Cherry Lane Theatre)
The title may be A Perfect Future,, but David Hay's new play is a throwback to those days when Edward Albee was all the rage, and everyone and his brother wrote plays about social events where the boozed-up guests ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Whipping Man (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center)
It's always a pleasure to meet a new playwright with a real gift for narrative, and, based on the evidence of The Whipping Man, Matthew Lopez has it in spades. From the minute the lights come up on a ruined, rainswept ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Black Tie (Primary Stages/59E59)
For someone whose great subject is the decline and fall of an entire way of life, A. R. Gurney has provided us with steady amusement for the better part of three decades. He shows no sign of flagging invention in Black Tie
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Gruesome Playground Injuries (Second Stage)
Gruesome Playground Injuries is a nearly perfect title: Like Rajiv Joseph's play, it's original, unsettling, and more than a little off-putting. Apparently gripped by the desire to subvert the two-character romance ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Three Sisters (Classic Stage Company)
A friend of mine often remarks it is God's mercy that there has never been a perfect production of Three Sisters. He says that Anton Chekhov's vision is so powerful, his character insights so penetrating, that, ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Road to Qatar! (York Theatre Company)
The Road to Qatar! has an irresistible comic premise: Two struggling musical theatre writers are hired to create a 90-minute tuner for the opening of a soccer stadium in the title country. (Astonishingly, it's a true story, ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: What the Public Wants (Mint Theatre)
There are exactly two scenes that really crackle in Arnold Bennett's 1909 drama What the Public Wants, and both of them involve Rob Breckenridge and Ellen Adair. He is Sir Charles Worgan, kingpin of a ...
|
