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  Theatre in Review: KLII (Under the Radar/Chelsea Factory)
The performer Kaneza Schaal has something to say, but during much of KLII she seems bent on keeping her thoughts to herself. The brief theatre piece begins with something of an audience traffic jam; arriving at Chelsea ...
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Theatre in Review: Merrily We Roll Along (New York Theatre Workshop)
"Yesterday is done/See the pretty countryside;" so goes the opening lyric for Merrily We Roll Along. But yesterday is never done for a storied flop that has been revived more often than many blockbusters, if only because ...
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Theatre in Review: Between Riverside and Crazy (Second Stage/Helen Hayes Theatre)
Few playwrights let their characters run off at the mouth as entertainingly as Stephen Adly Guirgis. In Between Riverside and Crazy some of the choicest comments come from Walter Washington, aka Pops (a term he hates), ...
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Theatre in Review: Ohio State Murders (James Earl Jones Theatre)
How great an actress is Audra McDonald? As the lights come up at the Jones, she is seen standing with her back to the audience, and, instantly, a hush falls across the theatre. She has done nothing -- we haven't even seen her face - ...
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Theatre in Review: Des Moines (Theatre for a New Audience)
It's a conundrum, I know, but the weirder Des Moines gets, the duller it becomes -- largely, I suspect, because it has no animating spirit of its own. Making its belated New York premiere, this 2007 drama by the late Denis ...
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Theatre in Review: Some Like It Hot (Shubert Theatre)
It has been a fraught season, sometimes marked by dramas more compelling offstage than on, but, at the Shubert, you can relax; the professionals are in charge. After a few months in which the new musicals have seemingly suffered from ...
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Theatre in Review: Becky Nurse of Salem (Lincoln Center Theatre/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre)
Is Deirdre O'Connell a witch? You have to wonder. She is certainly a practiced spellbinder, a talent that she exercises to the infinite benefit of Sarah Ruhl's latest offering. She enters -- totally frazzled, her hair a ...
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Theatre in Review: Ain't No Mo' (Belasco Theatre)
Ain't No Mo', which is scheduled to depart the Belasco on Sunday after 22 performances, is the second show to disappear from Broadway in unseemly haste. (The other is KPOP, which closed this past Sunday.) This ...
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Theatre in Review: The Far Country (Atlantic Theater Company)
When the powerful moments come in The Far Country, they are usually throwaways, offhand comments discreetly packed with dynamite that catch one by surprise. We are first introduced to Gee, who has come to China to purchase a ...
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Theatre in Review: La Race (Page 73/Working Theatre at McGinn/Cazale Theatre)
Playwright Blue Beckford-Burrell has assembled a lively crowd for her Off Broadway debut. There's Maxine -- outspoken, thirtysomething, and Black -- who, having lost her job, gets dragooned into running for the City Council seat ...
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Theatre in Review: KPOP (Circle in the Square Theatre)
It grieves me to say it, but KPOP has lost its pop -- also its snap and crackle. A critical and popular success five years ago in an immersive, walk-through production that was surely unsustainable for more than a limited run ...
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Theatre in Review: Underneath the Skin (La MaMa)
Throughout his adult life, Samuel Steward (1909 - 93) kept by his bedside a reliquary containing a tiny cutting from Rudolph Valentino's pubic hair. That this is not the most outré detail about him tells you plenty about this ...
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Theatre in Review: Hoagy Carmichael's Stardust Road (York Theatre at Theatre at St. Jean's)
Hoagy Carmichael wrote "Heart and Soul?" Who knew? That's one of the revelations of this fast-paced revue celebrating the great American composer. Another surprise is that the lyrics to everyone's favorite two-finger piano piece are ...
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Theatre in Review: A Christmas Carol (Nederlander Theatre)
You can't say the design department of A Christmas Carol hasn't done its work; indeed, the members of the team have all but exhausted themselves in bringing the Charles Dickens classic to theatrical life. Dane ...
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Theatre in Review: The Gett (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre)
According to the script of The Gett, it unfolds "either six thousand years ago or six days ago." In either time frame, it is distractingly vague, an antiromantic comedy about a heroine who, it seems, mostly wants to be left ...
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Theatre in Review: & Juliet (Stephen Sondheim Theatre)
A clear example of an audience show -- if you're the right audience -- & Juliet is more of a teenage dream than an adult entertainment. This cheeky musical squib on Shakespearean tragedy is the theatrical equivalent of YA ...
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Theatre in Review: The Rat Trap (Mint Theatre Company at City Center Stage II)
Marriage is a zero-sum game in this early, rarely seen, Noël Coward comic drama. His first full-length play, written he was only nineteen, The Rat Trap is a champagne cocktail with a bitter under-taste, a startlingly ...
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Theatre in Review: Sandra (Vineyard Theatre)
The title character of David Cale's new solo piece rashly undertakes a search for a missing friend, an endeavor that puts her in danger of vanishing herself. The intrigue begins when the fortysomething Sandra, who runs a Brooklyn ...
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Theatre in Review: Only Gold (MCC Theater)
I don't know why Paris must constantly take it on the chin from our musical theatre makers, but the blows keep coming. From the mislaid charm of An American in Paris to the cloying whimsies of Amélie and the blizzard of ...
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Theatre in Review: Evanston Salt Costs Climbing (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Center)
The weather outside is frightful, but it's nothing compared to the spiritual heebie-jeebies suffered by a gaggle of Illinois civil servants in Will Arbery's latest report from an unsettled heartland. They're a distinctively jittery ...
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