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  Theatre in Review: War Paint (Nederlander Theatre)
"Coco, Coco, hoping to find...." This bit of an old show tune kept going through my mind the other night at the Nederlander as I watched Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole go through their glamorous paces in the new musical < ...
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Theatre in Review: Angel & Echoes/A Gambler's Guide to Dying (59E59)
The Brits Off Broadway season at 59E59 gets off to a gripping start with Angel & Echoes, a pair of one-acts by Henry Naylor that probe deeply into the tinderboxes of Afghanistan and Syria. The opener, "Echoes," ...
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Theatre in Review: The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical/In & Of Itself
Two new Off Broadway productions have magic on their minds. If the title of The Lightning Thief doesn't mean anything to you, then you aren't up-to-date on the YA novel scene. So, let me introduce you to Percy Jackson, ...
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Theatre in Review: Present Laughter (St. James Theatre)
"I'm always acting!" So says Garry Essendine, matinee idol, ladies' man, and the eye of his own emotional hurricane in Present Laughter. In his titanic self-regard and withering way with words, the hero of Noël Coward's 1939 ...
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Theatre in Review: Amélie (Walter Kerr Theatre)
There's one indisputably great thing about Amélie, and her name is Phillipa. Soo's the name, and surely you don't need an introduction from me; if you didn't catch her way back when as the romance-struck girl from the country ...
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Theatre in Review: Gently Down the Stream (The Public Theater)
Gently Down the Stream begins with a moment that is a kind of historical snapshot; it won't be the last of the evening. It is 2001 and two gay men have connected by the then-novel means of a website called Gaydar. This ...
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Theatre in Review: Picnic/Come Back, Little Sheba (Transport Group at The Gym and Judson)
In his 1950s Broadway heyday, the playwright William Inge enjoyed a success second only to that of Tennessee Williams. As was the case with Williams, the succeeding decades were not so kind, and Inge, who killed himself, remains ...
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Theatre in Review: The Play That Goes Wrong (Lyceum Theatre)
The Play That Goes Wrong is the play that asks the question, Why isn't Michael Frayn calling his lawyer? This new slapstick stage farce, imported from London, is such a blatant rip-off of Frayn's now-classic Noises Off ...
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Theatre in Review: Vanity Fair (Pearl Theatre Company)
It may be that Kate Hamill and Eric Tucker have finally met their dream author in William Makepeace Thackeray. As you may recall, Hamill adapted Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, under Tucker's direction, for ...
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Theatre in Review: The Glass Menagerie (Belasco Theatre)
The director Sam Gold has developed a subtractive approach to classic plays. His 2012 staging of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger unfolded on a narrow strip at the edge of the stage, with nothing much in the way of set ...
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Theatre in Review: Miss Saigon (Broadway Theatre)
When Miss Saigon opened on Broadway in 1992, it seemed too soon for a big, bombastic, romantic musical about the American misadventure in Vietnam. In 2017, it still seems too soon. Shall we try again in 2042? ...
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Theatre in Review: Church & State (New World Stages)
We're starting to see a trend of playwrights who are determined to play serious issues for laughs, papering over painful material with sunny, good-time theatrical devices -- with results that are almost always awkward. Angry Young Man
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Theatre in Review: How to Transcend a Happy Marriage (Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater)
Extramarital affairs can be very messy things -- you don't need me for nuggets of wisdom -- but must plays about them be so messy, too? Consider the case of How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, in which two couples suddenly ...
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Theatre in Review: 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips (St. Ann's Warehouse)
For this exercise in what might be called children's theatre for all, Emma Rice and her crew at the theatre company Kneehigh have teamed up with the author Michael Morpurgo, who also wrote the novel War Horse, the ...
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Theatre in Review: The Emperor Jones (Irish Repertory Theatre)
It's curious how when a play is presented can alter one's perceptions of it; when the Irish Repertory first produced The Emperor Jones in 2009, one's attention was focused on the its savage, if dated, depiction of ...
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Theatre in Review: Latin History for Morons (The Public Theater)
Class is now in session at the Public's Anspacher Theater, with John Leguizamo as our unlikely professor. It's certainly a surprise to see the star of Freak, Sexaholix, and Ghetto Klown adopting an academic ...
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Theatre in Review: Angry Young Man (Urban Stages)
The impact of a work can be drastically affected, for good or for ill, by the narrative method chosen -- a fact illustrated with remarkable clarity at Urban Stages these nights. Angry Young Man, produced in London in 2008, ...
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Theatre in Review: The Price (Roundabout Theatre Company)
There's a clearance sale going on at the American Airlines Theatre these days; the goods include an enormous job lot of vintage furniture plus an extensive consignment of shattered dreams and burning resentments. Once again we are visiting ...
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Theatre in Review: Cry Havoc! (Bedlam at New Ohio Theatre)
Cry Havoc! is billed as a two-act, one-man show, but really it's a one-act show with the world's longest talkback. This is not a small distinction, and how you react to it will almost certainly determine your reaction to ...
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Theatre in Review: The Light Years (Playwrights Horizons)
Steele MacKaye, a prominent theatre figure of the nineteenth century, was what Variety likes to call a "multi-hyphenate," in his case, a writer, director, producer, theatre manager, and inventor. If he is remembered at all ...
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