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  Theatre in Review: The Parisian Woman (Hudson Theatre)
With its Washington, DC, setting, and the name of House of Cards scribe Beau Willimon on the title page, The Parisian Woman holds out the prospect of giving theatregoers the hot skinny on life in the nation's ...
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Theatre in Review: Diaspora (Red Moon Theatre Company/The Gym at Judson)
Nathaniel Sam Shapiro lists several quotes in the program notes for his new play, including this one from the writer Joshua Cohen: "In America, now more than ever, I'm convinced that we Jews have to hold our family conversations out ...
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Theatre in Review: The Briefly Dead (Adjusted Realists/59E59)
Death is the thing with feathers in Stephen Kaliski's new play. Smartly dressed, by Peri Grabin Leong, in a black jumpsuit with matching feathers on her shoulders and a cunning little hat bedecked with monarch butterflies -- ...
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Theatre in Review: Pride and Prejudice (Primary Stages/Cherry Lane Theatre)
The Bennet sisters have those Wedding Bell Blues -- quite literally so in their latest incarnation, at the Cherry Lane: The Fifth Dimension classic is heard as the first act of Pride and Prejudice comes to a close. This is ...
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Theatre in Review: Harry Clarke (Vineyard Theatre)
Most of us, at one point or another, would welcome the opportunity to reinvent ourselves, but few of us ever go to the extremes of the protagonist of Harry Clarke. David Cale, that spinner of theatrical shaggy-dog ...
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Theatre in Review: Twentieth Century Blues (Pershing Square Signature Center)
It's appropriate that Susan Miller's new play begins at a TED Talk, for, in lieu of drama, it offers a symposium -- or, more to the point, a gabfest -- dealing with issues of import for progressive women of a certain age. The talk ...
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Theatre in Review: School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play (MCC Theater)
The mean girls phenomenon has been so thoroughly worked over in books and films -- not to mention a certain musical coming our way this spring -- that one wonders if a writer can bring anything fresh to it; she can if her name is Jocelyn ...
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Theatre in Review: Muswell Hill (The Barrow Group/Pond Theatre Company)
Jess, the put-upon hostess of Torben Betts' new play, struggles to hold together a dinner party entirely populated by uncongenial souls; Betts has much the same challenge, and he fares only marginally better at the task. Nobody ...
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Theatre in Review: The Mad Ones (Prospect Theater Company/59E59)
Sam, the young heroine of The Mad Ones, is supposed to be driving herself to college, where she is to begin her freshman year; instead, she is sitting in the driver's seat, unable to put the key into the ignition. At times, during ...
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Theatre in Review: Hot Mess (Jerry Orbach Theater at the Theater Center)
Hot Mess is a foolish, mild little concoction -- really, a stand-up routine disguised as a play -- that asks the question, When a guy gets serious about a girl, should he confess his bisexual (read: homosexual) past? It's a poser, I ...
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Theatre in Review: What We're Up Against (Women's Project Theater)
Theresa Rebeck has chosen to set her indictment of office politics -- sexual and otherwise -- in an architecture firm. It's a curious choice because, even with the playwright's acute ear for hypocrisy, What We're Up Against ...
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Theatre in Review: Junk (Lincoln Center Theater/Vivian Beaumont Theater)
"When did money become the thing -- the only thing?" So asks Judy Chen, a young journalist who, along with many others, will find herself caught up in the widening gyre of the insider trading scandal that lies at the center of ...
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Theatre in Review: The Portuguese Kid (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
The conventional wisdom is that Jason Alexander, Sherie Rene Scott, and Mary Testa are starring in The Portuguese Kid; in truth, they're propping it up. Whatever amusement is to be found in John ...
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Theatre in Review: Office Hour (The Public Theater)
It's typical for Public Theater productions to touch on sensitive social and political issues, but you may need to prepare yourself for Office Hour, which takes a scalpel to one of American society's most painfully exposed ...
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Theatre in Review: Strange Interlude (Transport Group/Irondale Center)
One hardly expects to see a full-blown revival of Strange Interlude these days -- its last major New York revival, in 1985, was no barn-burner, even with Glenda Jackson, Brian Cox, and Edward Petherbridge in the leads -- but ...
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Theatre in Review: The Band's Visit (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)
The people behind The Band's Visit have set themselves a seemingly impossible task: to make a musical out of material so low-key, so intently focused, that it barely counts as an anecdote, with a cast of characters who, even ...
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Theatre in Review: Too Heavy for Your Pocket/Must
Two recent productions touch on very different, but, each in its own way, defining American moments. The remarkable Too Heavy for Your Pocket at Roundabout Underground focuses on two young black couples living in the ...
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Theatre in Review: Shadowlands (Fellowship for Performing Arts/Theatre Row)
It's funny how real life can intrude into a play. Shadowlands begins with C.S. Lewis, novelist and Christian apologist, giving one of his theological talks. The theme is love, pain, and suffering, and how they can exist in a ...
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Theatre in Review: Uncommon Sense (Tectonic Theater Project/Sheen Center)
Life on the autism spectrum is a big, complex subject, and, in embracing four distinct narratives about it, Uncommon Sense ends up so overloaded that at times it threatens to tip over altogether. The playwrights, Anushka ...
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Theatre in Review: Marcel and the Art of Laughter (Theatre for a New Audience)
As everybody knows, the best way to kill a joke is to explain it, right? Then how is it that Jos Houben harvests such a bumper crop of laughs in "The Art of Laughter"? Ostensibly a lecture on the theory of comedy, Houben takes some ...
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