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  Theatre in Review: Black No More (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Center)
For such a sincere musical, Black No More has a remarkably kooky premise: Dr. Julius Crookman, a Black scientist, invents a machine that turns Black people white, thereby (in his view), eliminating America's race problem. Max ...
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Theatre in Review: The Merchant of Venice (Theatre for a New Audience)
John Douglas Thompson long ago established himself as one of the best classical actors around; still, his wholly original Shylock is in a league of its own. He is central to Arin Arbus' staging of The Merchant of Venice ...
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Theatre in Review: Wolf Play (Soho Rep)
The bad decisions come thick and fast in Wolf Play, a drama about adoption that generates remarkably little sympathy for the parties involved. It begins with Peter, the white adoptive father of a Korean boy, showing up at the ...
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Theatre in Review: Space Dogs (MCC Theater)
Space Dogs illustrates the often-worrying gulf between technical skill and storytelling expertise so often seen these days. Everything on the design and staging side of this oddball offering is accomplished. In Wilson ...
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Theatre in Review: Tambo & Bones (Playwrights Horizons)
For a form of entertainment that died out nearly a century ago, the minstrel show continues to exert its grip on our collective imagination. Spike Lee put it at the center of his media satire Bamboozled. David Thompson, John Kander, ...
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Theatre in Review: Prayer for the French Republic (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
Some playwrights pose questions; Joshua Harmon detonates them. His disputatious characters lead with irony, historical data, and steel-trap logic; if these fail, there are always full-frontal verbal assaults. Their ideas are ...
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Theatre in Review: Long Day's Journey Into Night (Minetta Lane Theatre)
I've seen plenty of high-concept revivals in my time but Robert O'Hara's production of Long Day's Journey Into Night is in a class by itself. Rarely, if ever, have a director, cast, and creative team been so grimly ...
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Theatre in Review: Skeleton Crew (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
Theatre in Review: Skeleton Crew (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre) Just as August Wilson now-and-probably-forever owns the city of Pittsburgh, Dominique Morisseau has, dramatically speaking, taken possession ...
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Theatre in Review: Addressless (Rattlestick Theatre Company Online)
What is the best of way of dramatically handling an intractable, long-term problem like homelessness? How about a game? Well, it wouldn't be my first choice, but the people behind Addressless have conceived an interactive ...
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Theatre in Review: Company (Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre)
An old friend is back in town, looking remarkably soigné; well, she's had work done -- not to mention a gender reassignment. Marianne Elliott's stunningly original production of Company brings a famously tricky show -- ...
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Theatre in Review: Flying Over Sunset (Lincoln Center Theater/Vivian Beaumont Theater)
Flying Over Sunset just might be the best anti-drug PSA ever. Show it to young people thinking about getting high and I'll bet they'll swear off the stuff for life. They won't be scared straight, mind you; they'll just wonder ...
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Theatre in Review: Mrs. Doubtfire (Stephen Sondheim Theatre)
Mrs. Doubtfire, the not-bad/not-good new show at the Sondheim, offers a clinical case study of the perils of adapting popular film comedies to the stage, a concept that too many producers feel is the quickest, easiest way to ...
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Theatre in Review: Kimberly Akimbo (Atlantic Theater Company)
Because so many contemporary musicals are content to rehash old material, it's notable when a creative team transforms a difficult dramatic work with music, providing it with an identity of its own. When it opened Off Broadway in 2003, ...
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Theatre in Review: Camille O'Sullivan: Where Are We Now? (Irish Arts Center)
Camille O'Sullivan is quite the trickster. She takes the stage, looking rather distrait if not outright frazzled, a bundle of nerves fretting about her shoes and a missing credit card. Carrying on distractedly, rooting around the ...
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Theatre in Review: Selling Kabul (Playwrights Horizons)
Taroon, the young Afghan at the center of Sylvia Khoury's new play, is a man without a country. Previously, he worked as a translator for US troops, but it is 2013, the Obama Administration is reducing its military presence in the ...
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Theatre in Review: Cheek to Cheek: Irving Berlin... (York Theatre Company/Theatre at St. Jean's)
Several decisions have gone into making Cheek to Cheek: Irving Berlin in Hollywood a cut above the standard songbook revue, all of them linked to one key question: How to deal with the sheer bounty of Irving Berlin's ...
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Theatre in Review: Clyde's (Second Stage/Helen Hayes Theatre)
Are we sure Lynn Nottage is only one person? It's not just that she never repeats herself -- she seems to practically reinvent her talent from play to play. Clyde's may not go down as one of her major works, but it ...
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Theatre in Review: Diana (Longacre Theatre)
You've probably read a great deal about Diana -- very little of it adulatory, I'm sure -- but the new musical at the Longacre doesn't definitively lose its mind until just after intermission. Before that, everyone involved ...
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Theatre in Review: Morning Sun (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center)
In Morning Sun, you will find out everything you might want to know about the central character Charlotte and perhaps a little bit more. The details include up-and-down relationships with her mother and daughter, her job as a ...
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Theatre in Review: Morning's at Seven (Theatre at St. Clement's)
Morning's at Seven is one of American drama's true unicorns, a Chekhovian family comedy that, dismissed in its 1938 debut, has gradually acquired the feel of a classic. And for good reason: It's a peerless study of hidden-in ...
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