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  Theatre in Review: Hello, From the Children of Planet Earth (The Playwrights Realm/The Duke on 42nd St)
Don Nguyen's new comedy wants to be up-to-the-minute -- even futuristic, given in its space-age underpinnings and appointments -- but its key elements, and most of its dialogue, have been shipped in from The Island of Busted Sitcoms ...
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Theatre in Review: The Low Road (The Public Theater)
In a scene that represents playwright Bruce Norris at his malicious best, the second act of The Low Road begins at one of those glitzy global confabs that turn up on CNN from time to time. (Think of the World Economic ...
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Theatre in Review: A Letter to Harvey Milk (Theatre Row)
Harry Weinberg, a retired kosher butcher and the protagonist of A Letter to Harvey Milk, recalls how he always kept a jar of schmaltz and an unsliced loaf of rye bread on his store's counter. Why? "If they want free schmaltz, ...
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Theatre in Review: A Brooklyn Boy (East Village Playhouse)
Brooklyn's mean streets come ferociously to life in A Brooklyn Boy, a solo show that introduces us to a remarkable new talent, Steven Prescod. The story of his young life, it is told in a series of vividly rendered ...
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Theatre in Review: Folk Wandering (Pipeline Theatre Company/ART New York Theatres)
Folk Wandering begins with a bunch of people rummaging in an attic. Three objects are chosen at random, each of them cueing a story from a different decade. They are a diverse trio; the only thing linking these stories is the ...
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Theatre in Review: At Home at the Zoo (Signature Theatre Company)
Even in death, Edward Albee remains our most acute guide to the domestic bestiary, an intrepid explorer of the aggressions that lurk under the surface of civilized life. The alcohol-fueled wee-hours games of Who's Afraid of ...
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Theatre in Review: Amy and the Orphans (Roundabout Theatre Company)
Amy and the Orphans is so loaded with stellar performances that it might be a little while before you notice what a cunning trap the playwright, Lindsey Ferrentino, has laid. First up are Mark Blum and Debra ...
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Theatre in Review: An Ordinary Muslim (New York Theatre Workshop)
There's so much going on in An Ordinary Muslim that it feels less like a play and more like a pilot for a miniseries. This portrait of a Pakistani family struggling to find a meaningful place in British society is crowded ...
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Theatre in Review: The Amateurs (Vineyard Theatre)
This business of playwrights kibitzing on their own work is becoming worrisome. Only a couple of weeks ago we had the opening of [Porto], a moderately entertaining comedy about thirtysomething angst that was hijacked by the ...
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Theatre in Review: The Brobot Johnson Experience (All For One Theater/Bushwick Starr)
A brobot, you should know, is "half robot, half brotha," and Brobot Johnson was the very first of a series of cyborgs developed in the year 2018. We learn this from Flobot Owens, "ambassador and member of The Tribe Called Space Quest: The ...
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Theatre in Review: A Marriage Contract (Metropolitan Playhouse)
You don't hear too much about Augustin Daly anymore, but in his day -- from 1866 to 1899 -- he was a commercial powerhouse on Broadway, right up there with Dion Boucicault and Clyde Fitch. If nothing else, he went down in theatre ...
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Theatre in Review: Relevance (MCC Theater/Lucille Lortel Theatre)
Relevance holds out the tantalizing promise of a no-holds-barred debate between feminists of two generations, but it would have been a far better work if the battle lines had been more fairly drawn. It begins amusingly at an ...
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Theatre in Review: Black Light (Joe's Pub/The Public Theater)
I've seen many great performers at Joe's Pub, but few, if any, have taken over the room like Jomama Jones. The creation of writer-performer Daniel Alexander Jones, Jomama is an elegant black songstress of the sort that was ...
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Theatre in Review: Jerry Springer -- The Opera (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Center)
Shock value isn't what it used to be. When Jerry Springer -- The Opera opened at London's National Theatre in 2003, it was an instant cause célèbre, riding a wave of notoriety (and acclaim) into a lengthy West End run. The title ...
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Theatre in Review: Kings (The Public Theater)
Sarah Burgess is rapidly becoming our expert guide to the corridors of power. Her previous work, Dry Powder, about a leveraged buyout, was solid on the details of Wall Street amorality but, perhaps, a little too moralistic; ...
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Theatre in Review: A Walk with Mr. Heifetz (Primary Stages/Cherry Lane Theatre)
Although he gets title billing, the violinist Jascha Heifetz appears almost exclusively in the first act of James Inverne's rather chatty and sedate drama about art, history, and politics. In Act II, the great violinist has ...
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Theatre in Review: Is God Is (Soho Rep)
The playwright Aleshea Harris wants your attention, and she'll get it, by any means necessary. Is God Is is a violent horror comedy with a body count to equal any Jacobean revenge tragedy, several Quentin Tarantino ...
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Theatre in Review: Pete Rex (The Dreamscape Theatre/59E59)
As Alexander V. Thompson's play begins, Pete and Bo, best bros, are on the couch in Pete's "man-cavey" living room engaged in a spirited round of the video game Madden NFL and doing their level best to ignore the fact that Julie, ...
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Theatre in Review: The Bench (East Village Playhouse)
Even as the streets of New York are filled with members of the homeless community -- a phenomenon that the city seems powerless to do anything about -- Robert Galinsky's solo show takes us back to the nineteen-eighties, the last ...
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Theatre in Review: Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill (The Flea Theater)
Joni, the heroine of Steph Del Rosso's new play, is worried that her body is filled with holes. Funny thing, the play she inhabits is loaded with holes, too, and, unlike Joni's, they aren't imaginary. Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill ...
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