|
  Theatre in Review: Death of a Salesman (Hudson Theatre)
Since the 1970s, Willy Loman has, on average, visited us every dozen years or so, riding on a shoeshine and a smile (as playwright Arthur Miller so memorably put it) and heading for a crackup from which there is no return. It's not ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Ink'dWell (New Light Theater Project/59E59)
For nearly two hours, Ink'dWell roots around in the aftermath of a man's death without finding anything particularly interesting or dramatic to say about it. The deceased is Isaac, golden boy in a Black family that summers on ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: I'm Revolting (Atlantic Theater Company)
The title certainly gives one pause, and the setting, a skin cancer clinic in Manhattan, hardly seems promising. One can be entirely forgiven for slumping in one's seat at the Atlantic, steeling one's nerves for an evening likely to be ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge (Elevator Repair Service/Public Theater)
Strange how an event from the past can insert itself into the contemporary conversation. The 1965 debate, at the Cambridge Union, between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, was an impressive matchup at a time when race in America was a ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Weightless (WP Theatre)
Early on in Weightless, somebody notes, "Most people never know there are gods walking among us -- in fact, most people have forgotten the gods altogether." Not in musical theatre, where those fractious and superhuman ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: american (tele)visions (New York Theatre Workshop/Theater Mitu)
In american (tele)visions, a family of undocumented immigrants unravels against a shifting dreamscape defined by Walmarts, video games, and nonstop TV broadcasts. The time is the Reagan 1980s; Octavio, the patriarch, has ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: This Beautiful Future (Cherry Lane Theatre)
The set onstage at the Cherry Lane is striking, if not exactly appealing: a purple velour interior, with curved walls at stage right and upstage windows disclosing a stark hallway. The only furnishings are a mattress and a couple of ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Four Saints in Three Acts (The Doxsee @ Target Margin Theater)
"Pigeons on the grass, alas." So goes one of the most-quoted lines from Four Saints in Three Acts, the opera libretto by Gertrude Stein, written in 1927 and set to music by Virgil Thomson in 1928. Like ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski (Theatre for a New Audience)
As Cassandra could have told you, prophets of doom rarely get a welcome reception; when faced with the worst, most people reflexively look away, or change the subject, or deny the irrefutable evidence in front of them. (Ask any scientist ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Once Upon a (korean) Time (Ma-Yi Theater Company)
Daniel K. Isaac's inventive chronicle play, now at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre, weaves historical traumas and folk tales into a seamless braid that, over the course of a century, extends halfway around the world. Just as the ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Los Otros (Premieres NYC at ART/New York Theatres)
For much of its running time, Los Otros appears to be the story of two perfect strangers; that they are linked by one degree of separation doesn't become clear until near the end. Instead, librettist Ellen Fitzhugh and ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: As You Like it (New York Shakespeare Festival/Delacorte Theater)
The forest of Arden is the place to be these nights, at least as seen at the Delacorte, where a musical version of As You Like It is welcoming audiences into its warm embrace. In Myung Hee Cho's charming scenic design, ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Two Jews, Talking (Theatre at St. Clement's)
To decide whether you might enjoy this grab-bag of old-school hokum, take this simple test: Do you fondly recall the era of sitcoms like That Girl, Barney Miller, and The Love Boat? Five points. Are you nostalgic for the ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: On That Day in Amsterdam (Primary Stages/59E59)
Time is the antagonist in Clarence Coo's play, which oddly calls to mind Vincente Minnelli's classic film The Clock while confidently addressing a world of contemporary sorrows. As in The Clock, a casual meeting leads ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Butcher Boy (Irish Repertory Theatre)
It pains me to state the obvious, but in musical theatre, as in modern architecture, form follows function. This is something Asher Muldoon should consider.
Muldoon is the precocious talent behind The Butcher Boy -- having ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Panic of '29 (Less Than Rent Theatre/59E59)
When playwright Graham Techler falls in love with a joke, the attraction is forever. So devoted is he to his little whimsies that can never let them go; instead, he trots them out repeatedly, like a proud parent showing off his darlings. ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Oresteia (Almeida Theatre/Park Avenue Armory)
It has been a very, very long time -- perhaps never -- since I have seen a production so intimately acquainted with the terrors of the earth as Robert Icke's Oresteia. When first announced, the pairing of Hamlet ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Kite Runner (Hayes Theatre)
The theatre has arrived at an oddly bookish moment -- beginning, I think, with the arrival of War Horse in 2011 and rapidly accelerating since then. While Broadway's golden era saw adaptations of Ethan Frome, The Great Gatsby ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Ruth Stage/Theatre at St. Clement's)
Maggie, the heroine of Tennessee Williams' play, demands to be heard -- indeed, her future depends on it -- so it's a problem that, in this new revival, she is so difficult to make out. Maggie, a former golden girl locked in a ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Heart (Minetta Lane Theatre)
In Heart, Jade Anouka has quite a coming-out story to tell -- up to a point. A formidable actress -- she was a standout in Phyllida Lloyd's productions of The Tempest (as Ariel) and Henry IV (as Hotspur) ...
|
