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  Theatre in Review: Love Noël: The Songs and Letters of Noël Coward (Irish Repertory Theatre)
For a cool, refreshing sip of gin and tonic on a hot summer night, I commend to you this tribute to one of the twentieth century's greatest entertainers. Noël Coward did a great many things well; this piece, somewhat unusually, celebrates ...
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Theatre in Review: Rinse, Repeat (Pershing Square Signature Center)
A difficult subject, of the sort that requires the most sensitive handling, gets surprisingly lively dramatic treatment by a first-time playwright in Rinse, Repeat. In real life, Domenica Feraud has shared some of the ...
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Theatre in Review: Coriolanus (Delacorte Theatre)/Measure for Measure (The Duke on 42nd Street)
This week sees major productions of two of William Shakespeare's problem plays; in each case, the director tackles the work's imperfections head-on, with differing degrees of success. For New York Shakespeare Festival, Daniel ...
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Theatre in Review: Moulin Rouge! (Al Hirschfeld Theatre)
It was a strange experience to see Moulin Rouge! on the day of Hal Prince's passing. As the world knows, Prince and his collaborators turned the Broadway musical upside down, teaching it to investigate morals, manners, ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts Series B (Throughline Artists/59E59)
The conclusion of war brings neither happiness nor peace in Lucky, Sharr White's tense and mysterious two-hander, which kicks off Series B of this festival of one-acts on a strong, satisfying note. World War II is ...
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Theatre in Review: Little Gem (Irish Repertory Theatre)
The gift of gab reigns supreme in this beguiling triptych of contemporary Irish womanhood dealing with the sheer bloody business of living. In a series of intertwined monologues, Kay, Lorraine, and Amber -- residents of Dublin and each ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts, Series A (Throughline Artists/59E59)
It's not often that one encounters a play with the unsettlingly weird vibe of Courtney Baron's Here I Lie. It consists of intertwined monologues by a pair of characters who are startlingly candid about their flagrant ...
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Theatre in Review: A White Man's Guide to Riker's Island (Producers' Club)
Richard L. Roy spent most his early years informed by great expectations. "I grew up with the knowledge that if I worked hard enough, I could be that I ever wanted to be," we are told early on in A White Man's Guide to Riker's ...
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Theatre in Review: the way she spoke (Minetta Lane Theatre)
Isaac Gomez's new work is an honest and honorable attempt at tackling an appalling, long-running injustice; that it is a losing battle says much about the difficulty of the material, which may be immune to dramatic treatment, at ...
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Theatre in Review: The Rolling Stone (Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse)
The contemporary drama bookshelf is positively groaning with coming-out dramas, but in very few, if any, are the stakes as high as in The Rolling Stone. Chris Urch's play is set in Uganda, where homosexual acts or, as ...
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Theatre in Review: Broadway Bounty Hunter (Barrow Street Theater)
If anyone on Broadway is capable of bounty hunting, it's Annie Golden: No other musical theatre performer is better equipped to track down her quarry and bring 'em back alive. Still going strong after lo these many years -- her ...
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Theatre in Review: Jacqueline Novak: Get on Your Knees (Cherry Lane Theatre)
"Okay, that was hell." These are the words with which Jacqueline Novak greets her audience at the Cherry Lane. It's nothing against them, of course. "I hate a confident entrance," she adds. "I find it crass." It's just the sort of ...
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Theatre in Review: I Spy a Spy (Theatre at St. Clement's)
I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but you're never going to convince me that I Spy a Spy isn't the fruit of a plot by Julian Assange and Russian hackers (assisted, maybe, by Kim Jong Un), aimed at undermining America's ...
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Theatre in Review: Two's a Crowd (59E59)
Following the write-what-you-know principle, Rita Rudner's new musical is set in Las Vegas, where she has long been a fixture on the Strip. Too bad that the book for Two's a Crowd, which she wrote with Martin Bergman, ...
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Theatre in Review: In the Penal Colony (Next Door @ NYTW)
In the Penal Colony is a kind of theatrical botany experiment, grafting a set of thoroughly contemporary concerns onto a classic short story by Franz Kafka. It's an interesting attempt that results in a curio rather than a ...
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Theatre in Review: Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow (MCC Theater)
Everybody seems to have it in for Anton Chekhov these days, with playwrights and directors doing their damnedest to drag the great Russian playwright into the twenty-first century. Whether such efforts are meant as homage or ...
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Theatre in Review: Mojada (The Public Theater)
In 2017, The Public presented Luis Alfaro's Oedipus El Rey, which plausibly updated Sophocles' tragedy to the contemporary world of Southern California's gang culture; like its source material, it benefited from solid ...
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Theatre in Review: Reborning (Reality Curve Theatre/SoHo Playhouse)
Zayd Dohrn's plays are notable for sharp-eyed observations about cultural and religious differences; in contrast, Reborning focuses on a rather more intimate situation, to bizarre effect. The heroine, Kelly, is an ...
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Theatre in Review: The Bacchae (Classical Theatre of Harlem)
One thing you can say about The Classical Theatre of Harlem: This company always puts on a show. Its summer productions at Marcus Garvey Park are always grandly scaled, making use of some of the most interesting young designers around. ...
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Theatre in Review: Life Sucks (Wheelhouse Theater Company/Theatre Row)
For a long time -- probably since the morning after the opening of Ivanov, in November 1887 -- the debate has raged over how to balance the unstable, mercury-like blend of farce and tragedy that makes Anton Chekhov's plays ...
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