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  Theatre in Review: God Said This (Primary Stages/Cherry Lane Theatre)
God Said This is that true theatrical rarity, a sequel. About two and a half years ago, playwright Leah Nanako Winkler gave us Kentucky, a distinctly bumpy wedding of screwball farce and dysfunctional family ...
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Theatre in Review: The Light (MCC Theater)
A pair of longtime lovers gets engaged in The Light, but, instead of champagne, long-buried wounds are opened, with profound, possibly irrevocable consequences. This compact, superbly acted two-hander opens a new front in ...
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Theatre in Review: The Dance of Death/Mies Julie (Classic Stage Company)
You get your choice of August Strindberg in this pairing: straight, no chaser, or remixed; each comes with a strong whiff of brimstone. Conor McPherson's version of The Dance of Death is, essentially, ...
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Theatre in Review: The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Transit Group and NAATCO/Abrons Art Center)
Off Broadway continues its ad hoc lives-of-the-saints series with this revival of the 1971 drama about a famous (or notorious) anti-Vietnam War protest, featuring the activist priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan. It's a ...
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Theatre in Review: Ah, Wilderness! (Blackfriars Repertory and Storm Theatre Company/Sheen Center)
This production of Ah, Wilderness! begins with the strains of Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer," a canny choice that cuts to the heart of what is so remarkable about O'Neill's classic domestic comedy. It is ...
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Theatre in Review: Carmelina (Musicals in Mufti/York Theatre Company)
This is the third time that the York has presented a Mufti version of Carmelina, a show that clearly obsesses James Morgan, the artistic director -- and it is easy to see why. This year, the Mufti season of forgotten ...
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Theatre in Review: True West (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre)
True West is Sam Shepard's Gunfight at the LA Corral, a fratricidal throwdown between two brothers who couldn't be more different yet are psychologically chained to each other, haunted by an idea of the American West ...
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Theatre in Review: A Man for All Seasons (Fellowship for Performing Arts/Theatre Row)
When I was a boy in Catholic school, I thought I understood saints: They were merely people of superior virtue -- chastity, charity, prayerfulness, or what have you. The older I get, however, the more elusive they seem, their essential ...
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Theatre in Review: The American Tradition (New Light Theater Project/13th Street Repertory)
If Bertolt Brecht were alive today, he might be creating something very much like The American Tradition, a confrontational, blackly comic tale that builds a bridge between the ghastly realities of the antebellum South and ...
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Theatre in Review: Colin Quinn: Red State Blue State (Minetta Lane Theatre)
Other than the Statue of Liberty, Colin Quinn is currently my favorite American icon. The comedian has decided to wade into the degraded national discourse -- an act of folly, you might say, since half of the United States isn't ...
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Theatre in Review: The Convent (ART New York Theatres)
In her new play, Jessica Dickey assembles half a dozen women in a medieval convent in the south of France for a decidedly oddball spiritual retreat. The place is run by the middle-aged Mother Abbess, a purely honorific title, since ...
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Theatre in Review: Awake (The Barrow Group)
If you've been alive and awake the last couple of years, you may have noticed a certain fractiousness seeping into American culture, having to do with race, class, and anything else you can think of. Even without mentioning the name of a ...
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Theatre in Review: About Alice (Theatre for a New Audience)
If you ask me, Theatre for a New Audience has mistimed its latest attraction. About Alice runs through February 3, thereby missing Valentine's Day by a week and a half. An extension is in order, for it is difficult to ...
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Theatre in Review: Trick or Treat (Northern Stage/59E59)
There are more tricks than treats in this ungainly hybrid of a thriller, domestic comedy, and dysfunctional family slugfest. This is one of those twisty enterprises that defy detailed description lest one give away too much, but I can ...
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Theatre in Review: Alone It Stands (59E59)
"Rugby, that well-known game of Celtic origin." So says one of the characters in On Blueberry Hill, also at 59E59. His point is entirely sarcastic, but don't tell that to the characters of Alone It Stands, almost all ...
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Theatre in Review: LaBute New Theater Festival (St. Louis Actors' Studio) Davenport Theatre
Previous editions of this annual event have combined one piece by Neil LaBute with works by new writers. This time out, it's ninety minutes of pure LaBute, a format that may not be in the playwright's best interest. A professional ...
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Theatre in Review: Intelligence (Next Door @ NYTW)
I worry about our playwrights. I really do. Most of the works I've seen in the last few weeks have tackled important issues and asked probing questions, but too often they have been yoked to plots that beggar belief. Whether it was the ...
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Theatre in Review: On Blueberry Hill (59E59)/Blue Ridge (Atlantic Theater)
Two recently opened plays focus on criminal punishment or rehab; oddly, it is the lifers of On Blueberry Hill who find a strange sort of redemption, while, in Blue Ridge, the participants in a warm and fuzzy, ...
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Theatre in Review: Choir Boy (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
Even with the current wave of gay-themed plays landing on Broadway in the last season or so, Choir Boy finds something new to say. Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney wastes no time, crystallizing his original, ...
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Theatre in Review: Chambre Noir (Under the Radar/Public Theater)
Chambre Noir (Under the Radar/Public Theater) This strange, dreamlike, compelling piece takes the audience into the mind, on her deathbed, of Valerie Solanas, one of the strangest personalities to be coughed up by the cultural ...
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