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  Theatre in Review: Ain't No Mo' (Public Theater)
The world that playwright Jordan E. Cooper has imagined in Ain't No Mo' is full of signs and wonders, and the news isn't good. In an act of reparation that Ta-Nehisi Coates never saw coming, by national edict all black people ...
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Theatre in Review: Mrs. Murray's Menagerie (Ars Nova/Greenwich House)
I've begun to think of The Mad Ones as The Passive-Aggressive Players, so expert have they become at mining unspoken conflicts and tiny acts of hostility from whatever situation they present. The company develops pieces in concert ...
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Theatre in Review: Accidentally Brave (DR2 Theatre)
"I should let you know I am not okay," says Maddie Corman near the top of her extraordinary solo show. "This isn't one of those shows where I'm here to tell you that I was okay and then I wasn't okay but now I am okay." It's a novel ...
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Theatre in Review: Do You Feel Anger? (Vineyard Theatre)
Don't look now, but are we beginning to experience a Theatre of the Absurd revival? I tremble at the thought, yet the evidence mounts: The Mother, at Atlantic Theater, features Isabelle Huppert as a formidable matron trapped in a ...
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Theatre in Review: The Cradle Will Rock (Classic Stage Company)
CSC's greatest hits of anti-fascism series continues with this revival of Marc Blitzstein's storied labor opera. Like the company's production, earlier this season, of Bertolt Brecht's 1941 parable, The Resistible Rise of Arturo ...
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Theatre in Review: The White Devil (Red Bull Theater/Lucille Lortel Theatre)
The knives come out along with guns, power drills, and various baroque forms of poisoning, in Louisa Proske's production of John Webster's Jacobean shocker. Webster was a wild one, spinning elaborate intrigues and revenge ...
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Theatre in Review: Ain't Too Proud (Imperial Theatre)
Ain't Too Proud, the latest biomusical to roll off the Broadway assembly line, does little to distinguish itself from its predecessors, all of which follow the same general scenario: Young, ambitious, and naïve musical talents ...
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Theatre in Review: The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (Theatre for a New Audience)
If you stare -- very, very hard -- at Shana Cooper's production of Shakespeare's political thriller, you can see the outlines of a vision that seems all too relevant to today's America. It begins in organized chaos, with a crowd of ...
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Theatre in Review: The Lehman Trilogy (Park Avenue Armory)
Plays don't come more monumental than The Lehman Trilogy, and director Sam Mendes and his design team have provided a production to match it. This is theatre that breaks any number of rules, neatly getting away with every ...
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Theatre in Review: Smart Blonde (59E59)
Well into Willy Holtzman's new play with music, the one and only Judy Holliday, already a stage and film star, is hauled before the HUAC. It is the height of the Red Scare and, never a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, ...
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Theatre in Review: Vilna (Theatre at St. Clement's)
Vilna tells a story of such historical importance, bearing a message of such timeless relevance, that it is a great pity it hasn't been told more forcefully. The playwright, Ira Fuchs, who was inspired by a New York ...
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Theatre in Review: Alice by Heart (MCC Theater)
The fetishization of teen agony -- a major driver of contemporary musical theatre -- reaches its apex in Alice by Heart. Everyone involved has labored to present the Lewis Carroll classic, Alice in Wonderland, ...
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Theatre in Review: White Noise (The Public Theater)
We're well into the twenty-first century and Suzan-Lori Parks wants you to know that, here in these United States, we're still living in the shadow of the plantation. Nearly one hundred and forty-five years after Grant and Lee faced ...
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Theatre in Review: Fleabag (Soho Playhouse)
I'm late to the Phoebe Waller-Bridge party, but now that I'm here, I'm inclined to stay and stay. If, like me, you haven't become attached to Fleabag, the hit video series, this solo show would be an excellent place ...
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Theatre in Review: Superhero (Second Stage)
Superhero, a new musical, reserves its store of originality for the second act; before that, John Logan's book circles around its sad, small central situation, which feels both oddly familiar and lacking in color. ...
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Theatre in Review: After (Penguin Rep/59E59)
After is divided into three scenes, each of which has a distinct tone -- a major reason why Michael McKeever's sometimes penetrating drama never quite coalesces. The first, titled "Before," assembles two married ...
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Theatre in Review: Surely Goodness and Mercy (Keen Company/Theatre Row)
As plays go, Surely Goodness and Mercy is just a slip of a thing, but at least it gives us the chance to make the acquaintance of Jay Mazyck, a nineteen-year-old actor with an uncanny way of laying bare the soul of the ...
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Theatre in Review: Kiss Me, Kate (Roundabout Theatre Company/Studio 54)
I have good news for those of you who are weary of musicals about mean girls, proms, and the need to be more chill: Roundabout has whipped up a fizzy champagne cocktail in its revival of Kiss Me, Kate, an adult entertainment firmly ...
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Theatre in Review: The Cake (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
The tastiest thing by far in The Cake is Debra Jo Rupp, so much so that you'll hunger for extra servings. She is Della, proprietor of a Winston, North Carolina, bakery -- cakes are her specialty; no, they're her ...
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Theatre in Review: The Mother (Atlantic Theater Company)
As one enters the Atlantic Theater's auditorium, Isabelle Huppert is already onstage, seated on a couch on Mark Wendland's attractively minimal set, chicly costumed by Anita Yavich, her red locks carefully disarrayed, ...
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