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  Theatre in Review: Camp Siegfried (Second Stage)
Context is everything in Camp Siegfried, the simple story of a boy, a girl, and an ideology. Their romance unfolds on Long Island during the summer of 1938. He, played by Johnny Berchtold, approaches her (Lily ...
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Theatre in Review: Almost Famous (Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre)
There comes a point in Almost Famous when all the elements align, and the promise of a supercharged musical entertainment is fulfilled: The number "Fever Dog" is a note-perfect pastiche of a swamp rock rager circa 1973. The ...
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Theatre in Review: Downstate (Playwrights Horizons)
Playwright Bruce Norris has never shown much interest in taking prisoners, but even the most hair-raising of his works pales in comparison to Downstate. Taking direct and deadly aim at one of society's bedrock pieties, ...
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Theatre in Review: The Old Man and the Pool (Vivian Beaumont Theatre)
In the most uproarious part of Mike Birbiglia's latest solo effort, he asks the audience not to laugh. More to the point, he calls for a moment of silence, memorializing the subject of an anecdote about a man who dropped dead while ...
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Theatre in Review: Where the Mountain Meets the Sea (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
Where the Mountain Meets the Sea breaks one's heart coming and coming. Jeff Augustin's brief tale, with music, features two protagonists on separate road trips, the sum of their experiences forming a mutual account of ...
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Theatre in Review: Where We Belong (Public Theater)
In Where We Belong, Madeline Sayet details her tortured relationship with Shakespeare's plays. So troubled is this affair that it's a wonder she and the Bard didn't break up long ago.
Sayet, a Native-American theatre ...
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Theatre in Review: A Man of No Importance (Classic Stage Company)
Give John Doyle a musical and he immediately puts it on a diet. The director operates on the subtractive method, eliminating scenery, and, if possible, having the actors double as musicians. He takes a pair of shears to scripts, ...
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Theatre in Review: You Will Get Sick (Roundabout Theatre Company/Laura Pels Theatre)
If you attend You Will Get Sick, you'll see Linda Lavin auditioning to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz in full costume. So there's that.
Lavin is one of the chief supports propping up Noah Diaz's ...
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Theatre in Review: A Delicate Balance (Transport Group/NAATCO at Connelly Theatre)
The bar is open at the Connelly Theatre, where the suburbanites of Edward Albee's 1967 drama are once again clinking glasses and shredding each other to bits. Unlike the white-hot marital combatants in Who's Afraid of Virginia ...
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Theatre in Review: My Broken Language (Signature Theatre)
My Broken Language is so front-loaded with gorgeous writing that it takes some time to realize its very real limitations. Subtitled "a theatre jawn" -- Pennsylvania slang for "a thing, place, person, or event that one need ...
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Theatre in Review: The Piano Lesson (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)
There's quite a haunting going on at the Barrymore these nights, courtesy of LaTanya Richardson Jackson's revival of what may be August Wilson's best play. Although unseen, these shades are certainly felt thanks to the crack ...
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Theatre in Review: Topdog/Underdog (Golden Theatre)
Sometimes in a Broadway theatre, one experiences a kind of pentimento effect, glimpsing traces of productions that previously occupied the same stage. At the Golden Theatre, while taking in the superb teamwork of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
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Theatre in Review: Candida (Gingold Theatre Group at Theatre Row)
So much thought has gone into reimagining this revival of George Bernard Shaw's comedy that its meaning has seemingly slipped the company's collective mind. Director David Staller transposes the action of Candida from ...
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Theatre in Review: F*ck7thGrade (The Wild Project)
Jill Sobule's new show is just like her: sly, sweet, disarming, musically gifted, and often hilarious. Best-known for 1995 hit "I Kissed a Girl," she has flown under the radar in recent years; now she is ready to tell all about the ...
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Theatre in Review: Walking with Ghosts (Music Box Theatre)
The mind of Gabriel Byrne is quite the haunted house, populated by a multitude of shades -- some of them comforting, others guaranteed to give you the horrors. There is his mother, who, in her less affectionate moments, mutters, "Oh ...
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Theatre in Review: A Raisin in the Sun (Public Theater)
The sheer indestructibility of Lorraine Hansberry's pioneering Black drama is on display at the Public, most notably in its ability to withstand Robert O'Hara's directorial touches, some of which are more inspired than ...
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Theatre in Review: Straight Line Crazy (London Theatre Company at the Shed)
Playing urban planner Robert Moses, Ralph Fiennes is his own bulldozer, razing, with equal relish, city blocks and people, all in the name of progress. If his opponents' names are Vanderbilt or Whitney, so much the better. A ...
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Theatre in Review: Chester Bailey (Irish Repertory Theatre)
Even if Chester Bailey were a much weaker play, it would still be irresistible for the sensational father-son teaming of Reed Birney and Ephraim Birney. But Joseph Dougherty's beautifully shaped two ...
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Theatre in Review: Hound Dog (Ars Nova/Playco at Greenwich House)
It's a counterintuitive thought, to be sure, but the best playwrights understand the art of banality. Consider how Annie Baker, Anne Washburn, and this year's star rookie Gracie Gardner have mastered the knack of dialogue that says nothing ...
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Theatre in Review: Chekhov's First Play (Dead Centre/Irish Arts Center)
Chances are, you've never seen the first play written by Anton Chekhov, and you won't see it at the Irish Arts Center either, no matter the title of the current attraction. There's a good reason for this: The original script, an unfinished ...
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