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  Theatre in Review: The Damned (Comedie-Francaise/Park Avenue Armory)
One auteur trumps another in Ivan van Hove's adaptation of Luchino Visconti's notorious 1969 film. Although best known in this country for his inventive -- and, to my eyes, frequently willful -- interpretations of classic ...
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Theatre in Review: The Peculiar Patriot (National Black Theatre/Hi-Arts)
If you need a reason to see The Peculiar Patriot -- and I can give you several -- it is a golden opportunity to experience the work of actress/playwright/activist Liza Jessie Peterson. You may not recognize the name, ...
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Theatre in Review: Fire in Dreamland (The Public Theater)
About halfway through Rinne Groff's new play, the heroine, Kate, who has recently become besotted with filmmaking, describes her version of a cinematic sequence depicting the Dreamland fire at Coney Island. Dreamland, you should ...
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Theatre in Review: Antigone (Classical Theatre of Harlem)
For its summertime offering in Marcus Garvey Park, The Classical Theatre of Harlem presents a vividly contemporary twist on a Sophoclean tragedy. The stunning set design by Christopher Swader and Justin Swader depicts the ...
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Theatre in Review: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (Irish Repertory Theatre)
Ever since On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, a musical about ESP and past-life regression, opened on Broadway in 1965, it has undergone more reincarnations than Shirley MacLaine. Time and again, creative teams have been ...
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Theatre in Review: Fiddler on the Roof (National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene)
It is fascinating how much the context of a production can affect its impact. Joel Grey's revival of Fiddler on the Roof has its ups and downs -- more of the former than the latter, I hasten to add -- but experiencing ...
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Theatre in Review: Mary Page Marlowe (Second Stage Theater/Tony Kiser Theater)
Even as an addition to Tracy Letts' resume -- which, besides August: Osage County and Man from Nebraska, includes the paranoid arachnid freak-out, Bug, and the trailer-trash melodrama, Killer Joe -- ...
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Theatre in Review: Sugar in Our Wounds (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage II)
Donja R. Love, a self-described Afro-Queer playwright, may be something of a new face on the New York theatre scene, but he has big ambitions. His Love Trilogy is intended to examine queer black life at different historical moments, ...
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Theatre in Review: Skintight (Roundabout Theatre Company)
The revelations one sometimes has at the theatre: Watching Skintight, I was suddenly grateful never to have had the opportunity to sit on the couch with my mother, running through the available men on Grindr. In the words of ...
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Theatre in Review: Fairview (Soho Rep)
In Fairview, the playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury empties her bag of tricks so thoroughly you have to wonder if she will have anything left for the future. Her new work consists of a barrage of devices -- some of which ...
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Theatre in Review: Girls and Boys (Minetta Lane Theatre)
Carey Mulligan's performance in Girls and Boys is so assured, so thoroughly gripping, that it generates considerable suspense: Can she possibly sustain such intensity, her effortless command over the audience, for the ...
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Theatre in Review: Carmen Jones (Classic Stage Company)
There are, I think, two ways of looking at this thoroughly unexpected revival of Carmen Jones. On the one hand, it is likely to go down as one of the season's most fascinating curios, a revival of a show that for many years ...
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Theatre in Review: Log Cabin (Playwrights Horizons)
In Log Cabin, Jordan Harrison has the entirely laudable idea of lampooning entitled, wealthy gays and lesbians who, in the second half of the Obama Administration, are so caught up in the tiny dramas associated with ...
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Theatre in Review: Cyprus Avenue (The Public Theater)
It's a strange experience to see a fine actor giving a tour-de-force performance in a play that goes irreparably off the rails, but such is the singular experience of Cyprus Avenue. Stephen Rea spares himself nothing ...
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Theatre in Review: Lonesome Blues (York Theatre Company)
Blind Lemon Jefferson isn't a household name, but he is a foundational figure in the history of the blues. Apparently, his country blues sound, which made him a star in the late 1920s, wasn't picked up by the artists who came ...
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Theatre in Review: Conflict (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)
"Why do people belong to the Labour Party?" This question -- not facetious in context -- hangs over Miles Malleson's 1925 drawing room intrigue. Clearly, Malleson was a man of many parts -- actor, screenwriter, director, producer, ...
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Theatre in Review: Teenage Dick (Ma-Yi Theater Company/The Public Theater)
For most of us, the adolescent years are filled with enough intrigue -- alliances, secrets, and betrayals -- for, well, one of William Shakespeare's history plays. Thus, the premise of Teenage Dick, Mike Lew's ...
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Theatre in Review: Othello (The Public Theater at the Delacorte Theater)
For the current revival of Othello at the Delacorte, Ruben Santiago-Hudson has taken a radical approach: He has dispensed with any high-concept staging ideas, preferring to do the play straight up, using a set that ...
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Theatre in Review: First Love (Cherry Lane Theatre)
It's time to steel ourselves for the rise of what must be called karaoke drama. A couple of weeks ago, Theater Breaking Through Barriers opened a revival of A. R. Gurney's The Fourth Wall, the action of which is punctuated by cast ...
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Theatre in Review: Dan Cody's Yacht (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
In his previous play, The City of Conversation, Anthony Giardina used the living room of a prominent Washington, DC, hostess as a staging ground for the fall of postwar liberalism and the rise of the Ronald Reagan right. In
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