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  Theatre in Review: Incantata (Irish Repertory Theatre)
If nothing else, Incantata offers the opportunity to get acquainted with the fine Irish poet Paul Muldoon. A longtime resident of this country, he has been poetry editor of The New Yorker and is a faculty ...
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Theatre in Review: A Sign of the Times (Theatre 511)
Stephen Lloyd Helper's new play apparently focuses on the existential crisis of a traffic controller working outside a construction site, but he has much bigger things on his mind. This nameless character is that guy one sees all ...
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Theatre in Review: We're Gonna Die (Second Stage Theater)
Don't be put off by the title of Young Jean Lee's new entertainment; in fact, it articulates the good news. And, if you've been feeling a little roiled by events lately -- and who among us has not? -- you might consider making a pit ...
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Theatre in Review: The Unsinkable Molly Brown (Transport Group/Abrons Arts Center)
Molly Brown is, apparently, so unsinkable that her musical keeps floating back to the surface. The fabulously nouveau riche wife of a Denver mining baron has, over the years, become a classic American character, not least because of her ...
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Theatre in Review: All the Natalie Portmans (MCC Theater)
There are all sorts of storms brewing in C. A. Johnson's play, and at the center of them all is Keyonna, the tart-tongued, unapologetically lesbian, sixteen-year-old heroine. Obviously brilliant -- she often skips her charter school ...
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Theatre in Review: Dana H. (Vineyard Theatre)
The current Vineyard season could be labeled "Ladies in Distress, in Plain Sight." In Is This a Room, the company's previous production, the writer-director, Tina Satter, turned the transcript of an FBI interview with the leaker ...
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Theatre in Review: Tumacho (Clubbed Thumb)/Mud/Drowning (Mabou Mines)
Two new productions provide a snapshot of the downtown theatre aesthetic now and then. Tumacho, at the Connelly Theatre, is the latest effort of Ethan Lipton, the playwright/songwriter whose semi-cabaret ...
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Theatre in Review: Anatomy of a Suicide (Atlantic Theater Company)
Alice Birch's new play begins as an exercise in organized chaos, gradually arranging itself into a triptych of tragedy covering three generations of women in a single family. It's a tough, bold piece of writing that proves ...
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Theatre in Review: Blues for an Alabama Sky (Keen Company/Theatre Row)
It's appropriate that Blues for an Alabama Sky begins with its heroine, Angel, being dragged home in a state of inebriation. After all, it is uptown New York, 1930, and the hangover from the Harlem Renaissance is commencing; Angel ...
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Theatre in Review: The Sabbath Girl (Penguin Rep Theatre/59E59)
The Sabbath Girl is the play that asks the question: Can the nice young Orthodox knish merchant find happiness with the fetching Shabbos goy next door? To which I respond: Is cream cheese fattening? Are pickles sour? Is the Pope ...
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Theatre in Review: Dracula/Frankenstein (Classic Stage Company)
Classic Stage has been converted to a house of horrors for the winter, although perhaps not in the way intended. In any case, it is offering new versions of two classic chillers, each of which has been adapted to death in various media. ...
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Theatre in Review: Chasing the River (Chain Theatre)/The Commons (59E59)
Chasing the River is a family drama that plays like crime fiction. Kat, a thirtyish steak house waitress living in Philadelphia, returns, for the first time in years, to the small Pennsylvania town where she grew up. It is ...
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Theatre in Review: Happy Birthday Doug (SoHo Playhouse)
Happy Birthday Doug marks the return of Drew Droege, the comic Margaret Mead of the gay set in the Silverlake section of Los Angeles. The action -- a series of monologues -- unfolds at a birthday party held in the ...
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Theatre in Review: Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes)/Where We Stand
Two new productions turn on vital questions of democracy and citizenship; one of them makes powerful use of specifics while the other flounders in a fog of generalities. Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes) an En Garde Arts' ...
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Theatre in Review: Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)
Through the good offices of the Mint, we know about playwright Miles Malleson's grasp of post-World War I disillusionment among the British upper and middle classes. Such works as Conflict and Yours Unfaithfully, both ...
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Theatre in Review: Hamlet (Gate Theatre/St. Ann's Warehouse)
It's the details that count in Yaël Farber's staging of Hamlet, a series of gestures big and small that add up to an extraordinarily comprehensive vision of Shakespeare's masterpiece: The clinical image of the dead king's ...
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Theatre in Review: House Plant (Next Door at NYTW)
If House Plant is any indication, it appears that the more our young playwrights strive to strike contemporary stances, the more they end up reverting to the retro. The situations and characters in Sarah Einspanier's play are ...
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Theatre in Review: Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Center)
The late Mary Rodgers coined the term "why musical" to denote a show adapted from a play, book, or film that doesn't add anything fresh or new to its source material. This season, first with Sing Street and now with Bob and Carol ...
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Theatre in Review: Grand Horizons (Second Stage/Helen Hayes Theatre)
The prolific and gifted Bess Wohl is at it again. This season alone, she has given us Continuity, a knowing (and disturbing) comedy about moviemaking and climate change, and Make Believe, a creepy and occasionally ...
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Theatre in Review: Sister Calling My Name (Blackfriars Repertory Theatre/Storm Theatre Company)
Sister Calling My Name wants to tell an uplifting tale of the power of faith, but it is so overtaken by evasions and cosmetic touch-ups that the effect is spoiled. Buzz McLaughlin's script focuses on the redemptive power of ...
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