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  Theatre in Review: Prince of Broadway (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
There's a lot to like in this fond and often vivid scrapbook of numbers from one of the American theatre's most astonishing careers -- which, not incidentally, provides a showcase for some of today's most gifted musical theatre performers. ...
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Theatre in Review: The Terms of My Surrender (Belasco Theatre)
"How the f--k did this happen?" So asks Michael Moore at the top of his new Broadway show, a political pep rally-cum-revival meeting for liberals still in shock over the November election. "This," of course, is the election of ...
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Theatre in Review: Come Light My Cigarette/Van Gogh's Ear
Maybe we can blame it on the Trump Administration. As I have frequently noted, summertime is the theatre's squirrely season, when all sorts of bizarre fancies are aired and vanity producers come out to play. Sensible theatre fans limit ...
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Theatre in Review: A Real Boy (Ivy Theatre Co. in association with Athena Theatre/59E59)
A Real Boy is a real muddle, a weird tale about the plight of marionettes that gets thoroughly tangled in its own plot strings. It begins with Miss Terry, a kindergarten teacher, worrying that something is wrong with Max, one ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts, Series B (59E59)
Neil LaBute has been one of the mainstays of the Summer Shorts series, so it's good to see him in fine form with "Break Point," the highlight of this year's B program. As the title suggests, the action unfolds in the ...
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Theatre in Review: Curvy Widow (Westside Theatre)
For more years than I care to remember, the presence of Nancy Opel in a production has been a gilt-edged guarantee of fun, no matter her surroundings. Her technique is as faultless as it is minimalist: A quarter turn of her head, ...
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Theatre in Review: A Parallelogram (Second Stage)
In plays like Clybourne Park, Domesticated, and The Qualms, Bruce Norris delighted in breaching social norms, putting in his characters' mouths words that would normally be unsayable in polite company. A ...
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Theatre in Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (The Public Theater at the Delacorte Theater)
There are so many delightfully mad, moonstruck people running around in Lear deBessonet's new production of Shakespeare's comedy that I almost hesitate to single out any of them. And yet, in this company of equals, three ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts, Series A (59E59)
This annual festival of one-acts usually packs a surprise or two, but a razor-sharp comedy about Ayn Rand? "Acolyte," the highlight of the evening, features Rand at home with her husband Frank O'Connor one night in 1954. Their guests are ...
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Theatre in Review: Dear Jane (Theatre Row)
Dear Jane is a concept in search of a play, a bewildering collection of dramatic bits that pretend to lay bare the soul of playwright Joan Beber while revealing nothing at all. In a program note, Beber says the play is ...
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Theatre in Review: Money Talks (Davenport Theatre)
The title of this new musical is not a metaphor. In the opening number, "I'm Money," George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin -- familiar faces on one-, five-, ten-, and hundred-dollar bills -- appear ...
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Theatre in Review: Amerike: The Golden Land (National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene)
This brisk, funny, and touching musical revue, which just extended its run at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, takes audiences through the whirlwind of the American Jewish immigrant experience, from the turn of the last century to the end of ...
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Theatre in Review: Say Something Bunny! (UNDO Project Space)
One of the oddest and most captivating entertainments of the new season is located far off the beaten path in a rather anonymous building on the 500 block of West 20th Street. You make your way to the third floor -- you need to follow the ...
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Theatre in Review: Hamlet (The Public Theater)
Before it collapses in a heap of mannerisms and conflicting acting styles, Sam Gold's contemporary take on Hamlet manages some remarkable effects. This is a minimalist vision of the play, at times as intimate as a whisper. ...
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Theatre in Review: Me the People (Triad Theater)
Subtitled "The Trump America Musical," Me the People wants to do for the current cockeyed state of American politics what Forbidden Broadway has long done for the follies of the Great White Way. Basically, Nancy ...
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Theatre in Review: 1984 (Hudson Theatre)
"If you leave your seat for any reason during the performance, you will not be permitted to return." So says the insert in Playbills currently being handed out at the Hudson Theatre; at the performance I attended, the usher offered a ...
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Theatre in Review: Marvin's Room (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre)
Well into the second act of Marvin's Room, the heroine, Bessie -- who has spent the bulk of her adult life caring for others -- admits to her long-estranged sister, Lee, that she once enjoyed a romantic relationship with a ...
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Theatre in Review: Bastard Jones (The Cell)
When it comes to Henry Fielding's seminal comic novel, theatre people are moths to the flame; unfortunately, they usually end up seared. The website Ovrtur.com, which keeps track of such things, lists seven different musical theatre ...
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Theatre in Review: Napoli, Brooklyn (Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre)
Napoli, Brooklyn is, for much of its running time, a remarkably sluggish drama built around a first-act curtain so shocking that I'm a little surprised it doesn't nightly inspire an audience panic attack. It's a force majeure ...
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Theatre in Review: Fulfillment Center (Manhattan Theatre Club City Center Stage II)
The title of Abe Koogler's new play couldn't be more ironic; it refers to one of those big warehouses from which goods purchased on the Internet are shipped. Fulfillment Center, the play, is a snapshot of American ...
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