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  Theatre in Review: Into the Woods (St. James Theatre)
To understand why this Into the Woods is so enchanting, you must first understand what it is not: Do not expect elaborate designs, magical special effects, or fancy directorial concepts. Unlike its many New York revivals -- ...
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Theatre in Review: Twelfth Night (Classical Theatre of Harlem)
The infinite flexibility with which the plays of William Shakespeare accommodate directors' wildest visions is on display these nights in Harlem, where Carl Cofield's revival of Twelfth Night fills the Richard ...
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Theatre in Review: Mister Miss America (All for One Theatre at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre)
I never knew it, but apparently Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre contains one of those mysterious portals that transport one to the distant past. How else to explain the building's summer tenant? On the surface, Mister Miss America ...
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Theatre in Review: Between the Lines (Tony Kiser Theater)
In the second act of Between the Lines, Delilah, the literature-besotted heroine, becomes trapped -- literally -- inside a fantasy novel, with no obvious means of escape. I think I know how she feels, having watched the cast ...
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Theatre in Review: Richard III (New York Shakespeare Festival/Delacorte Theatre)
We've had some great productions of Richard III in recent years, along with some really terrible ones, but none have been as conflicted as Robert O'Hara's staging at the Delacorte. It's a mass of warring impulses, both ...
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Theatre in Review: Hamlet (Almeida Theatre/Park Avenue Armory)
These days, it seems, Elsinore lives in a state high alert; anyway, that's the impression one takes from contemporary productions of Hamlet, which, increasingly, pit the title character against the brutal workings of ...
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Theatre in Review: Epiphany (Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre)
The Feast of the Epiphany, as you may know, celebrates the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus Christ. This fact eludes nearly everyone in Brian Watkins' new play, even though they are gathering for dinner to celebrate it. One of ...
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Theatre in Review: Titanique (The Asylum NYC)
The summer silly season officially arrives with this frail, noisy offering, a Hollywood spoof grafted to a playlist of Céline Dion hits. Indeed, Dion is the show's presiding muse: During a museum tour, she emerges from a crone's outfit, ...
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Theatre in Review: Lessons in Survival: 1971 (Vineyard Theatre)
We have a new genre: the James Baldwin transcript play. Last March, the theatre company known as the american vicarious presented Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley, a nearly verbatim replay of the famous argument, at the Oxford Union, ...
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Theatre in Review: Chains (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)
Apparently, The Great Resignation really began in 1909. That's the unmistakable impression to be taken away from Chains, the latest entry in the Mint's ongoing rediscovery of the early twentieth century playwright Elizabeth ...
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Theatre in Review: Corsicana (Playwrights Horizons)
The average summertime high temperature in Corsicana, Texas runs to well over ninety degrees, which might explain the heavy atmosphere of languor that has overtaken Playwrights Horizons, where Will Arbery's new drama is currently ...
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Theatre in Review: Queen (NAATCO at ART/NY Theatres)
Those darn alternate facts get some nice people into a lot of trouble in Madhuri Shekar's taut tale of academic intrigue. Hard-working grad students Sanam and Ariel are sitting pretty -- so much so that their jealous classmates shun ...
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Theatre in Review: The Orchard (Arlekin Players Theatre/Baryshnikov Arts Center)
"Look, it's all the same, nothing has changed. White, all white!" So says Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya, heroine of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and, in this production, one's first thought is: The lady needs to have her head ...
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Theatre in Review: soft (MCC Theater)
Donja R. Love's new play is an explosive drama wrapped in an envelope of transcendence. It begins with a flurry of flower petals falling on us and ends in the mystical union of lovers. Between these episodes, the drama is boiling ...
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Theatre in Review: Snow in Midsummer (Classic Stage Company)
When it comes to plot twists, Snow in Midsummer may be the season's record-setter. Set in a provincial manufacturing town not too far from Shanghai -- called "New Harmony," a sure sign skullduggery is afoot -- it is an ...
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Theatre in Review: The Bedwetter (Atlantic Theater Company)
First, there's the chorus line of sedatives. In Act II of this new musical, about the spectacularly dysfunctional childhood of comic Sarah Silverman, the ten-year-old heroine is taken to a doctor about her nighttime urinary problems ...
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Theatre in Review: Mr. Parker (Penguin Rep Theatre/Theatre Row)
Mr. Parker is a modestly scaled, modestly achieving romantic drama about a star-crossed affair between men of two generations. The kind of attraction often booked in June when LGBTQ tourists come to town for Pride month, it ...
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Theatre in Review: Dreaming Zenzile (National Black Theatre/New York Theatre Workshop)
One way of thinking about Dreaming Zenzile is that it is essentially a two-act death scene. Somi Kakoma's musical play focuses on the night in 2008 when the great Miriam Makeba suffered a fatal heart attack during a ...
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Theatre in Review: ...what the end will be (Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre)
Late in Mansa Ra's new play, a family drama salted with plenty of humor, the great Keith Randolph Smith stops the action cold with a monologue about death. The veteran actor -- always a guarantee of pleasure -- is cast as ...
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Theatre in Review: Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Board Members
At this moment, it takes a performer with special nerve to stand up in front of an audience, waving a gun. Appearing in front of the curtain at Soho Rep, pistol in hand, Christine Carmela Herrero is Lolita, a Puerto Rican trans ...
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