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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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Theatre in Review: Boesman and Lena (Signature Theatre Company)
It's hard to think of anything in world drama more influenced by Samuel Beckett than Boesman and Lena. The difference is that Waiting for Godot unfolds in an arid wasteland that existed only in Beckett's mind, while
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Theatre in Review: If Pretty Hurts, Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (Playwrights Horizons)
I'm beginning to worry about some of our young playwrights, for whom childhood seems to be an inescapable web. Only a few days ago, I saw Jeremy O. Harris' "Daddy," in which a twentysomething artist hooks up with a sixtyish ...
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Theatre in Review: Dying in Boulder (La MaMa)
Dying in Boulder (or the perfect place to die if you have good karma!), as per the full title, has a bit of a karma problem -- to go along with a plot problem, a character problem, and, most of all, a credibility problem. ...
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Theatre in Review: Chick Flick: The Musical (Westside Theatre)
Chick Flick: The Musical -- with that title, this is a show that knows its target audience and how to woo it. A girls'-night-out entertainment about a girls' night out, it is almost indecently poised to cater to fun-seeking females ...
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Theatre in Review: Imagining Madoff (New Light Theater Project)
If you're going to call a play Imagining Madoff, you're going to have to do a little, well, imagining. Deb Margolin's play delves into the mind of a notorious criminal -- a king of fraud whose Ponzi scheme left ...
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Theatre in Review: "Daddy" (The New Group at Pershing Square Signature Center)
Jeremy O. Harris has the kind of problem colleagues his age might envy -- but it's a problem, nevertheless. Having arrived in a funnel cloud of controversy while still a student at Yale Drama School, he is, arguably, facing demands ...
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Theatre in Review: The B-Side (Wooster Group/St. Ann's Warehouse)
The full title is almost longer than the show: The B-Side: "Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons": A Record Album Interpretation -- all this for a piece running a mere sixty minutes. And yet, what a haunting hour in the ...
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Theatre in Review: Hurricane Diane (New York Theatre Workshop/WP Theater)
The playwright Madeleine George apparently subscribes to the old saw about capturing more flies with honey than with vinegar, at least if Hurricane Diane, now whipping up gales of hilarity at New York Theatre Workshop ...
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Theatre in Review: Recent Alien Abductions (The Play Company/Walkerspace)
We're used to plays -- especially family dramas -- beginning with a character entering and, using direct address, setting the stage for us. Such speeches tend to be on the brief side and are usually loaded with essential information about ...
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Theatre in Review: By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Signature Theatre Company)
"Welcome to the hall of mirrors, honey." This remark, made by the title character of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, comments on a Hollywood party where practically everyone -- hostess, guests, and staff -- has assumed a false ...
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Theatre in Review: The Price of Thomas Scott (Mint Theater Company)
As it did with the Irish playwright Teresa Deevy, the Mint has launched an initiative, "Meet Miss Baker," to retrieve the works of Elizabeth Baker, who went from office typist to "one of the most widely discussed playwrights in ...
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Theatre in Review: Good Friday (The Flea Theater)
Good Friday begins with a trigger warning of sorts, informing audience members that some scenes may be intense and upsetting. But really, they needn't have bothered: The play carries with it only the most tenuous connection ...
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