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  Theatre in Review: King of the Jews (HERE Arts Center)
Can you make a deal with the devil and not get fatally rooked? Faced with overwhelming evil, can good people manage evil in the name of lessening it? Or must the effort end in bloodshed and horror? Tough questions all, they get a ...
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Theatre in Review: Arms and the Man (Gingold Theatrical Group/Theatre Row)
In the charming prologue to David Staller's production of George Bernard Shaw's classic comedy, we are warned that gunfire will be heard -- but more predominant is the sound of romantic ideals merrily being shattered to bits. ...
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Theatre in Review: Emergence (Pershing Square Signature Center)
"Things are not as they seem," says Patrick Olson, the guiding spirit of this oddball hybrid of lecture and concert performance, and I'm certainly not going to argue with him. Indeed, he makes this statement repeatedly in Eme ...
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Theatre in Review: Redwood (Ensemble Studio Theatre)
Say hello to Brittany K. Allen, a double threat you'll want to know better. She stars in Redwood which she also wrote, but this is no mere vehicle; she surrounds herself with a gallery of sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued ...
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Theatre in Review: Chasing Happy (Pulse Theatre/Theatre Row)
Nick, a middle-aged architect living in Provincetown, is a mess, and not just because he's the central character of Michel Wallerstein's wayward, enervated comedy. He has just enjoyed the sex of his dreams with Brad, a well-toned ...
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Theatre in Review: Partnership (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)
If George Bernard Shaw was interested in the New Woman, Elizabeth Baker specialized in the Businesswoman. The long-obscure playwright, whose career ran roughly parallel to Shaw's heyday, specialized in middle-class studies that ...
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Theatre in Review: Gutenberg! The Musical! (James Earl Jones Theatre)
The only thing wrong with Gutenberg! The Musical! is, as it happens, Gutenberg! The Musical! This isn't as sweeping a statement as it looks, but it points to the problem at the heart of a brash entertainment that ...
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Theatre in Review: Salesman (Yangtze Repertory Theatre/Connelly Theater)
Sometimes a playwright blindsides you, so slyly is he laying the groundwork for a transcendent moment. Jeremy Tiang's new play is about the famous 1983 Beijing production of Death of a Salesman, a key cultural and political ...
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Theatre in Review: All the Devils Are Here (DR2 Theatre)
If you happen to be in Union Square and catch a whiff of brimstone, don't be surprised. It's merely Patrick Page, holding a séance of sorts, calling up the spirits of Shakespeare's wickedest characters. Beginning with Lady Macbeth' ...
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Theatre in Review: The Lights Are On (New Light Theater Project/Embeleco Unlimited at Theatre Row)
Playwright Owen Panettieri wants to have his pie and eat it, too. In the case of The Lights Are On, the pie is poisoned. Or maybe not; who can say? Reality is a slippery thing in this psychological thriller, which ...
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Theatre in Review: Salesman (Yangtze Repertory Theatre/Connelly Theater)
Sometimes a playwright blindsides you, so slyly is he laying the groundwork for a transcendent moment. Jeremy Tiang's new play is about the famous 1983 Beijing production of Death of a Salesman, a key cultural and political ...
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Theatre in Review: Melissa Etheridge: My Window (Circle in the Square)
"Sometimes I think I'm so dramatic," Melissa Etheridge muses at the top of her almost-one-woman show. Actually, "affable" is more like it: Armed with a dry wit and a knack for self-deprecation, she guides us, genially, through the ...
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Theatre in Review: Infinite Life (Atlantic Theater Company)
This will be brief, as the production closes this weekend before moving on to the National Theatre in London. I was bumped from an earlier performance by a case of COVID in the cast and rescheduling is always arduous at this time of year ...
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Theatre in Review: The Refuge Plays (Roundabout Theatre Company/Laura Pels Theatre)
Playwright Nathan Alan Davis can't help swinging for the fences; he is an inherently ambitious artist. His previous New York production, Nat Turner in Jerusalem, wrestled mightily with the title character, his violent acts ...
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Theatre in Review: (pray) (Ars Nova/National Black Theatre at Greenwich House)
Even the unchurched might enjoy dropping in at (pray), which, billed as "a sacred offering," offers a unique, nondenominational contemplation of faith and Black history. In all its surface particulars, it is a true Sunday ...
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Theatre in Review: Jaja's African Hair Braiding (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
"Well, thank you, ladies. I feel like I moved in for the day." So says one of the customers at the title establishment of Jocelyn Bioh's latest play, and you're likely to share the feeling if you make an appointment at the ...
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Theatre in Review: Purlie Victorious (Music Box Theatre)
Purlie Victorious is that rarest of things, a farce about race relations in America, and why not? In the view of the playwright, the late, great Ossie Davis, race relations in America are a farce. Subtitled A ...
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Theatre in Review: Golden Rainbow (York Theatre Company/Theatre at St. Jean's)
Show fans who have been yearning for the good old days of fun-bad musicals shouldn't miss this 1960s artifact, a star vehicle that had a decent run and then vanished, living on only in myth and legend. Time was when Broadway was loaded ...
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Theatre in Review: Doppelganger (Park Avenue Armory)
I write with some hesitation about this music-theatre performance piece, being not especially well-versed in classical music or the high-concept work of director Claus Guth. Yet Doppelganger is so stunningly designed ...
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Theatre in Review: Dig (Primary Stages 59E59)
Is there something in the air? Our playwrights -- some of them, anyway - are suddenly focusing on the deep unease underlining life in the American heartland. The just-opened Swing State, set in rural Wisconsin, takes on climate ...
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