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  Theatre in Review: Joan of Arc: Into the Fire (The Public Theater)
Promises, promises: Joan of Arc: Into the Fire, a new musical by David Byrne, promised to be as exciting as Here Lies Love, his disco pop opera about the rise and fall of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. (This isn't ...
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Theatre in Review: Villa (The Play Company at The Wild Project)
There are dozens -- maybe hundreds -- of plays about history's worst episodes; plays about the Holocaust alone would fill several bookshelves. There are significantly fewer plays, I think, about the challenge of surviving such events: When ...
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Theatre in Review: White Guy on the Bus (Delaware Theatre Company/59E59)
Bruce Graham's new play is about the terrible effects of racism -- on white people. That's certainly a fresh slant. The white guy of the title is Ray, an investment counselor of a certain age, who has grown tired and ashamed of his ...
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Theatre in Review: The Outer Space (The Public Theater/Joe's Pub)
Do you ever dream of fleeing the pains of city life for something more salubrious -- say, to orbit around the planet Mercury? That's the fantastically fey premise of The Outer Space, the latest song cycle to emerge from the ...
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Theatre in Review: The Moors (The Playwrights Realm/The Duke on 42nd Street)
The characters in Jen Silverman's new play, inhabitants of a mansion in a bleak corner of England, often wander off onto the surrounding moors, all but vanishing into the fog that appears to be a permanent fixture of life there. ...
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Theatre in Review: 9 Circles (Sheen Center)
With that title, you won't be surprised to hear that Bill Cain's play draws its structure from the Inferno section of Dante's Divine Comedy, and it's difficult to imagine a better guide through its descending horrors than the ...
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Theatre in Review: Linda (Manhattan Theatre Club)
There are rumors of a hurricane in Penelope Skinner's new play, but, when it arrives it proves to be little more than a downpour; even at full force, how could it compete with the play's torrential title character, especially as ...
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Theatre in Review: Omega Kids (New Light Theater Project/Access Theater)
In Omega Kids, Noah Mease hasn't just written a play, he has invented an entire superhero universe; Omega Kids is the title of a fictional franchise about supernaturally gifted teens -- sort of a junior division of the ...
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Theatre in Review: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Barrow Street Theatre)
In this new production of the classic musical, you come for the pies and stay for the horror. Rachel Edwards, of the London theatre company Tooting Arts Club, had the notion of producing Sweeney Todd -- the grisliest ...
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Theatre in Review: On the Exhale (Roundabout Underground)
In On the Exhale, a play about gun violence in America, Marin Ireland takes aim at the audience and fires; she is armed only with MartÃn Zimmerman's text and her own formidable talent, but it's enough to leave ...
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Theatre in Review: Wakey, Wakey/C. S. Lewis On Stage: The Most Reluctant Convert
Suddenly, the theatre seems vitally interested -- almost obsessed, really -- with the Last Things. A few days ago, I saw Everybody, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' reworking of the Tudor-era classic Everyman, in which a human ...
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Theatre in Review: All the Fine Boys (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Center)
Two middle-school teens experience markedly different sexual awakenings, with radically different consequences, in Erica Schmidt's new play. Jenny and Emily are best friends who, during weekend sleepovers, stay up late, devouring ...
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Theatre in Review: Dolphins and Sharks (Labyrinth Theater Company)
Capitalism and its discontents roil a Harlem copy shop in James Anthony Tyler's new drama. As rendered in Marsha Ginsberg's hyperreal set design, it's one of those too-bright places, its interior lined in white plastic siding ...
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Theatre in Review: The View UpStairs (Lynn Redgrave Theater)
If Brigadoon were a French Quarter gay bar in the early 1970s, it would look like the watering hole in The View UpStairs. In Jason Sherwood's set design, it's all about the details. The interior, covered with red faux ...
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Theatre in Review: The Skin of Our Teeth (Theatre for a New Audience)
Has The Skin of Our Teeth, a play about mankind's knack for surviving the worst, passed its sell-by date? That thought occurred to me the other day, as I watched a talented company, under the direction of Arin Arbus, ...
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Theatre in Review: Everybody (Signature Theatre)
It's especially fun to attend a new Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play, because you can never tell where he's headed next. In the past few seasons, he has deconstructed the racial assumptions in a vintage Dion Boucicault melodrama (An ...
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Theatre in Review: The Ephemera Trilogy (The Tank at The Paradise Factory)
In "Bend," the third and longest part of The Ephemera Trilogy, Kimi Maeda turns her complicated, and not entirely happy, family history into an elegant piece of performance art. The story she has to tell is one that will be ...
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Theatre in Review: Kunstler (59E59)
The best thing about Jeffrey Sweet's new play, about the famed -- and sometimes notorious -- trial lawyer William Kunstler, is Jeff McCarthy. Best known as a musical theatre leading man (Side Show, Urinetown
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Theatre in Review: Sunday in the Park with George (Hudson Theatre)
This new revival of Sunday in the Park with George offers two stellar lead performances, an exceptionally fine supporting cast, and some of Stephen Sondheim's most ravishing songs. The production, which began life as a benefit gala ...
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Theatre in Review: If I Forget (Roundabout Theatre Company/Laura Pels Theatre)
In If I Forget, a family battle is fought on both personal and political fronts. Lou Fischer is long retired and, as his loved ones gather for his seventy-fifth birthday in July 2000, the disposition of the building that once housed ...
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