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  Theatre in Review: Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin (59E59)
An American icon is discovered in splendid isolation in Hershey Felder's latest exercise in musical history. (For those of you coming in late, Felder -- an actor, pianist, and composer -- has pioneered his own genre of solo ...
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Theatre in Review: Scraps (The Flea Theater)
This mishmash of scenes and styles serves up dramatic scraps in its search for the right format to dramatize the aftermath of a young black man's unmotivated killing at the hands of a white cop. The playwright, Geraldine Inoa, ...
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Theatre in Review: 1969: The Second Man (Next Door at New York Theatre Workshop)
For this eccentric late-summer musical entertainment, Jacob Brandt, conceiver of 1969: The Second Man, draws our attention to the life of an American semi-hero, Buzz Aldrin. If that sounds a little cruel, ...
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Theatre in Review: Days to Come (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)
Days to Come isn't a very good play, and I'm awfully glad that the Mint is presenting it. That's a contradiction, I know, but we're talking about Lillian Hellman, who for her seventy-nine years on this earth was a ...
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Theatre in Review: Pretty Woman (Nederlander Theatre)
The romance is off. I can't say I was a huge fan of the 1990 film Pretty Woman -- for me, romantic comedy died just after the release of The Philadelphia Story -- but the nascent star power of Julia Roberts and her chemistry ...
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Theatre in Review: Henry VI (National Asian American Theatre Company/ART New York Theatres)
The stage deck is painted red in NAATCO's two-part adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy, and for good reason: In these plays, the very earth of Britain is repeatedly stained with blood. The action begins with the ...
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Theatre in Review: Gettin' the Band Back Together (Belasco Theatre)
I caught up with the new tenant at the Belasco rather after the fact, having been bumped from a performance last week due to an illness in the cast. Meanwhile, the press pretty much filleted Getting' the Band Back Together, ...
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Theatre in Review: Less Than 50% (59E59)
Less Than 50% is a play, by Gianmarco Soresi, an actor and comic, about the love affair of Gianmarco Soresi, an actor and comic, and Laura Catalano, an actress and his longtime creative partner. What unfolds in ...
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Theatre in Review: Be More Chill (Pershing Square Signature Center)
There's a genuine grass-roots musical-theatre event happening Off Broadway, and the big questions about Be More Chill are if it can transition from a boutique hit to a breakout success -- and if it deserves to do so. Neither ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts Series A (59E59)
The first entry in this long-running festival of one-act plays could fairly be titled Summer Shorts: The Men Are Scum Edition, so thoroughly does it inventory the seemingly natural depredations of the male sex. Abby Rosebrock ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts Series B (59E59)
It takes an old pro to redeem the second series of one-act plays currently being presented at 59E59. Series A features two awkward dramas about exploitative adulterous affairs, but it is Neil LaBute who gets it right with ...
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Theatre in Review: The House That Will Not Stand (New York Theatre Workshop)
The plays of Marcus Gardley are notable for a keen sense of drama wedded to a rather florid theatricality, and there's no getting around the fact that the latter sometimes undermines the former. He has emerged as a distinctive ...
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Theatre in Review: Wars of the Roses: Henry VI and Richard III (124 Bank Street Theater)
This unusual mash-up, taken from Shakespeare's history plays, takes two major risks -- one textual and one having to do with interpretation. Neither pays off, although the production gives one a glimpse of why, in addition to Ric ...
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Theatre in Review: Head Over Heels (Hudson Theatre)
A heartfelt question for our musical theatre makers: Doesn't anyone write characters anymore? Seemingly not; the only shows to open in the last several weeks featuring actual, recognizable human behavior have been Twelfth Night and ...
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Theatre in Review: The New One (Cherry Lane Theatre)
The New One, the latest chapter of Mike Birbiglia's life inventory, begins with a couch and ends with another couch; these two moments of repose bookend a series of events that will thoroughly upend his life. The ...
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Theatre in Review: Brecht on Brecht (Potomac Theatre Project/Atlantic Theater Stage II)
Seeing this roundup of the German playwright's greatest hits in prose, dialogue, and lyrics, I had the oddest double sensation: In some ways, Bertolt Brecht speaks directly, powerfully to this moment; in others, he couldn't seem ...
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Theatre in Review: Twelfth Night (The Public Theater at the Delacorte Theater)
Nobody sings "Hey, ho, the wind and the rain" in this Twelfth Night, although on Friday night, when I attended, the words would have been all too appropriate. The first half of the production was marked by on-and-off drizzle ...
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Theatre in Review: This Ain't No Disco (Atlantic Theater Company)
This new musical wants to take us back to those glamorous nights at Studio 54 in its Liza-Halston-Andy heyday, but the version of the legendary pleasure palace conjured here is a haunted house inhabited by the most insubstantial of shades ...
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Theatre in Review: The Pattern at Pendarvis (New Dog Theatre Company/HERE)
The Pattern at Pendarvis opens a window on an obscure and fascinating bit of twentieth-century American gay history -- and, by extension, poses a probing question about how such history is recorded. So much research has been ...
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Theatre in Review: Straight White Men (Second Stage/Helen Hayes Theater)
The poster for Straight White Men is an interesting case of truth in advertising; arguably, it gives away too much information about playwright Young Jean Lee's dramatic method. It features several of the principals ...
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