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  Theatre in Review: Animal (Atlantic Theater Stage II)
Rebecca Hall is an actress of such coruscating intelligence that she can even make madness seem lucid. As Rachel, who is under the care of a psychiatrist for reasons that only gradually become apparent, she manages to make clear ...
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Theatre in Review: The End of Longing (MCC Theater at Lucille Lortel Theatre)
Matthew Perry has labored so long, and so successfully, in the world of television sitcoms that, apparently, he is having trouble getting out of that particular creative mindset. As the author and star of The End of Longing ...
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Theatre in Review: Master (Foundry Theatre at Irondale Center)
Master is a museum exhibit, a memorial service, and a family drama -- and thoroughly haunting on all three counts. You arrive at the Irondale Center to find a sign saying, "Welcome to Uncle Jimmy's Celebration of Life. ...
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Theatre in Review: The Government Inspector (Red Bull Theater at The Duke on 42nd Street)
The first thing we see in Jesse Berger's production of Nikolai Gogol's classic farce is a collection of town officials -- a distinctly shabby lot, it should be noted -- moving in a circle, their collective mood one of high ...
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Theatre in Review: Sweetee (Pershing Square Signature Theatre Center)
Seeing Sweetee the other night, I had the oddest sensation -- of attending a musical that has yet to be written. Don't get me wrong: Sweetee is a full-length show, running two and a quarter hours. It has a cast of ...
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Theatre in Review: Rotterdam (59E59)
Rotterdam begins with Alice, a young woman in her early thirties, seated at her laptop, worrying over the message she has written (and rewritten and re-rewritten) to her parents, announcing that she is (a) a lesbian and (b) ...
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Theatre in Review: The Boy Who Danced on Air (Abingdon Theatre Company)
The best thing about the new attraction at the Abingdon is the chance to catch up with composer Tim Rosser and librettist Charlie Sohne, artists with distinctive voices and the nerve to take on difficult, challenging material ...
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Theatre in Review: Can You Forgive Her? (Vineyard Theatre)/Building the Wall (New World Stages)
Two of our better playwrights have come a cropper in the last week or so in plays that attempt to make sense of this unhinged American moment. In works like After Ashley, Becky Shaw, and Rapture Blister, Burn, Gina ...
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Theatre in Review: The Whirligig (The New Group at Pershing Square Signature Center)
The first thing we see in The Whirligig -- even before the play begins, as we enter the theatre -- is a young woman lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV drip. Her name is Julie, she is 21, and she is dying from a ...
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Theatre in Review: Venus (Signature Theatre)
The title character of Suzan-Lori Parks' play is Saartjie Baartman, a member of the Khoikhoi tribe, from what is now South Africa. In 1810, the twenty-year-old Baartman was taken to England, where she was put on display as The Venus ...
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Theatre in Review: Sojourners/Her Portmanteau (New York Theatre Workshop)
These paired offerings are part of a projected nine-play cycle about the history of one Nigerian American family. Certainly, the playwright, Mfoniso Udofia, doesn't lack for ambition. I am reliably informed that Udofia doesn't ...
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Theatre in Review: The Lucky One (Mint Theater Company at Theatre Row)
"Let's all talk about Gerald." So says Tabitha Farringdon, the in-house grande dame in A. A. Milne's drama, written in 1917 and first produced, on Broadway, in 1922. Tabitha's irony is lost on her relatives, all of whom live ...
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Theatre in Review: Seven Spots on the Sun/Derren Brown: Secret
In MartÃn Zimmerman's new drama -- presented by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in association with The Sol Project -- the cankered legacy of civil war in a South American country breeds fresh horrors in peacetime. The locale is ...
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Theatre in Review: Iphigenia in Splott (Sherman Theatre, Cardiff/59E59)
Actors have nerves of steel. Near the conclusion of Iphigenia in Splott the other night, a woman in the audience apparently fell ill. Unfortunately, she was sitting at the end of the third row against the house left wall of ...
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Theatre in Review: Rooms (Irish Arts Center)/Arlington (St. Ann's Warehouse)
There's a haunting going on at Cybert Tire, a former auto care business located in a warehouse-style building on Eleventh Avenue. It is slated to become the new home of the Irish Arts Center, but, for the moment, it contains three enclosed ...
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Theatre in Review: 3/Fifths (3LD Art & Technology Center)
We've had so many plays about the apocalyptic future recently that it was only a matter of time before artists started focusing on the apocalyptic present. Perhaps taking their cue from Dismaland, the dystopian theme park installation by ...
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Theatre in Review: Twelfth Night (The Public Theater)
If free Shakespeare in Central Park is Joseph Papp's greatest gift to New York City, then the Public Theater's Mobile Unit may be his most necessary offering. Each year, a troupe is assembled to perform a play by Shakespeare in various ...
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Theatre in Review: Happy Days (Theatre for a New Audience)
I've seen all sorts of actresses take on the role of Winnie, the semi-buried matron who is the principal subject of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, but none have made the character quite as purposeful as Dianne Wiest
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Theatre in Review: Marry Harry/Ernest Shackleton Loves Me
Two new musicals are notable more for their design elements than their books or scores. Marry Harry, now running at York Theatre Company, announces its intentions in its second number, "Harry's Way." Just to be clear, the ...
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Theatre in Review: Pacific Overtures (Classic Stage Company)
"One must accommodate the times/As one lives them..." So sings Kayama, one of the many whose lives are derailed by history in this sleek, marvelously lucid revival. Even among Stephen Sondheim fanatics, Pacific Overtures
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