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  Theatre in Review: Little Girl Blue (New World Stages)
The tumultuous life and embattled career of Nina Simone would seem to be the very stuff of musical theatre, and so it proves with Little Girl Blue. Performer/playwright Laiona Michelle has crafted her own ...
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Theatre in Review: Bruise & Thorn (Pipeline Theatre Company/ART New York Theatres)
Bruise & Thorn is a glitter bomb of a play, a comedy-melodrama about LGBTQ Nuyoricans from Queens who, pursuing their dreams, get caught up in some wildly seamy doings. It's a fairy tale, really, albeit one that takes in ...
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Theatre in Review: Man Cave (Page 73 Productions/Connelly Theatre)
The thriller, it seems, is back. A just-for-fun genre that petered out decades ago, made irrelevant by hollow trickery, is being creatively appropriated by some of today's playwrights to make acute points about the current screwed-up state ...
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Theatre in Review: Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley (the american vicarious)
A storied moment from the 1960s -- one which casts a long shadow over today's divided America -- is recreated in this theatre piece now playing at the Great Room at the ART/New York South Oxford Space in Brooklyn. It's a recreation of the ...
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Theatre in Review: This Space Between Us (Keen Company/Theatre Row)
At first glance, This Space Between Us appears to be written in English, but that's a superficial impression. In fact, the characters in Peter Gil-Sheridan's new comedy speak shtick, a dialect of English that is devoid ...
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Theatre in Review: On Sugarland (New York Theatre Workshop)
In Aleshea Harris' new play, On Sugarland is a graveyard-cum-shrine, dedicated to the many war dead from a small community, somewhere in the American South, that is home to several Black families. Less a cemetery than ...
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Theatre in Review: English (Atlantic Theater Company/Roundabout Theatre Company)
Even if she didn't have such a sharp eye and ear for her characters' accidental moments of revelation, the playwright Sanaz Toossi would be a most welcome addition to the season because, unlike many of her colleagues, she shows us ...
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Theatre in Review: Out of Time (NAATCO/The Public Theater)
Collections of one-acts, featuring contributions from multiple writers, are, almost by definition, mixed experiences; the trick lies in assembling and ordering the pieces, ensuring that they fit into the overall concept. Also, they should ...
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Theatre in Review: First Down (Noor Theatre/59E59)
First Down begins with the startling sight of a major league football player, in the team locker room, assuming the Muslim prayer position. It's particularly surprising because the fellow in question, George Berri, has a ...
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Theatre in Review: sandblasted (Vineyard Theatre/WP Theater)
The stage at the Vineyard Theatre is covered with sand. Sounds of surf and seagulls fill the air. At stage center are two large striped umbrellas. It's a striking tableau by set designer Matt Saunders, complete with fluffy clouds ...
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Theatre in Review: The Music Man (Winter Garden Theatre)
It has been a roller-coaster ride for everyone on Broadway recently, but few have endured as much whiplash as the cast and crew of The Music Man. A pandemic delay, the departure of the scandal-ridden producer Scott Rudin, and ...
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Theatre in Review: The Daughter-in-Law (Mint Theatre Company/City Center Stage II)
Looking for dramatic fireworks? There are plenty of explosions emanating from City Center Stage II these nights, as The Daughter-in-Law builds to its blistering climax. One rarely thinks of D. H. Lawrence as a playwright, for good ...
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Theatre in Review: Intimate Apparel (Lincoln Center Theatre/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater)
Lynn Nottage's play Intimate Apparel is such a fine piece of work that it hardly wants adaptation to the musical theatre -- or so I thought until I was enchanted by Ricky Ian Gordon's chamber opera version. ...
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Theatre in Review: The Same (Corcadorca Theatre Company/Irish Arts Center)
Warning to producers: Advertising The Same by Enda Walsh may not produce the desired result. Audiences fatigued by such works of high intensity and minimal clarity as Ballytuk, Disco Pigs, and Grief is the ...
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Theatre in Review: Made by God (Irish Repertory Theatre)
It was Jean Kerr, a good Catholic, who once noted that, in the theatre, God is usually a lousy part. I'd like to extend that thought to include the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is a long-held observation on my part, beginning with repeated ...
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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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