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  Theatre in Review: The Band's Visit (Atlantic Theater Company)
Conventional wisdom has it that if you're going to write a musical, you need characters who sing; in other words, they need big emotions that can naturally spill over into song. It doesn't take much for Nellie Forbush, Dolly Levi, or Madam ...
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Theatre in Review: Rancho Viejo (Playwrights Horizons)
The suburbs can be spooky; just ask Dan LeFranc, who, in his last play, The Big Meal -- a kind of contemporary homage to Thornton Wilder's The Long Christmas Dinner -- showed a real knack for gently discovering the ...
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Theatre in Review: The Pigeon in the Taj Mahal (Irish Repertory Theatre)
In case you're wondering what the Irish Rep is doing producing a play with such an exotic title, let me explain: The pigeon is Eddie the Pigeon, a rather peculiar fellow who lives in the Taj Mahal, a trailer park not too far from Limerick. ...
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Theatre in Review: The Portal (Minetta Lane Theatre)
"Welcome to The Portal" says a message on the enormous video screen that currently dominates the Minetta Lane stage. "A modern shamanic journey. An inward journey of self-discovery. The show is less literal and more ...
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Theatre in Review: Ride the Cyclone (MCC Theater at Lucille Lortel Theatre)
The premise of Ride the Cyclone sounds like something from the old TV series The Twilight Zone: A sextet of adolescents is killed in a roller coaster accident. Transported to the astral plain, they have to decide which ...
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Theatre in Review: A Bronx Tale (Longacre Theatre)
It's not often that the opening number of a musical is interrupted by a brutal slaying, but that's what happens in A Bronx Tale. The cast is busily putting over "Belmont Avenue," a lively, kickily choreographed (by Sergio ...
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Theatre in Review: Othello: The Remix (Westside Theatre)
The high-concept premise behind Othello: The Remix is the sort of thing to warm a movie executive's heart: It's William Shakespeare's tragedy, but updated, with the iambic pentameter tossed in favor of the jagged, ...
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Theatre in Review: Poison (Origin Theatre Company/Theatre Row)
The program for Poison notes that, in 2010, it won an award for best Dutch play staged that year -- but what grabs one's attention right away is its distinctively grim premise: The two characters, known only as She and He, ...
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Theatre in Review: The City That Cried Wolf (59E59)
"It was not a happily-ever-after kind of city." So says private detective Jack B. Nimble about Rhyme Town, the dark and sinister place where he practices his dubious profession. A disgraced former cop -- he was deprived of his badge by ...
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Theatre in Review: Sweet Charity (The New Group at Pershing Square Signature Center)
The New Group is currently presenting a markedly unsweetened Charity in a production that raises many questions about vintage Broadway musicals -- including how far one can go in reinterpreting them, how much they can be ...
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Theatre in Review: The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World...(Signature Theatre)
You can't say they don't plan their seasons thoughtfully at Signature Theatre. Six months ago, I sat in Signature's Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre, feeling ravaged by Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro -- a plotless, ...
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Theatre in Review: Notes from the Field (Second Stage)
Anna Deavere Smith is the greatest vanishing act in show business. The way she disappears, in full audience view, into each character, capturing their affects, mannerisms, vocal tics -- anything that distinguishes them as ...
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Theatre in Review: My Name is Gideon: I'm Probably Going to Die, Eventually (Rattlestick Theatre)
Reviewers covering My Name is Gideon: I'm Probably Going to Die, Eventually are given an envelope to open at the conclusion of the performance. It contains a note asking us not to give away any of the show's surprises. ...
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Theatre in Review: This Day Forward (Vineyard Theatre)
When Nicky Silver's plays, like The Lyons or Raised in Captivity, really work, they function as perfectly layered servings of hilarity and sadness. If the balance isn't precisely maintained, however, the whole thing is ...
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Theatre in Review: Don't You F**king Say a Word (59E59)
The best thing about Andy Bragen's new play is that it lets us spend some time with Jennifer Lim and Jeanine Serralles. They play Kate (Lim) and Leslie (Serralles), old college acquaintances who run into each other and ...
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Theatre in Review: Kingdom Come (Roundabout Underground)
Kingdom Come begins with the sight of the actress Carmen M. Herlihy, in an enormous fat suit, lying in bed; one look and it's impossible not to think of Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale, which, at Playwrights ...
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Theatre in Review: Terms of Endearment (59E59)/Dead Poets Society (CSC)
I don't often combine two productions in a single review, but when stage adaptations of popular films open one after the other, they provide the perfect raison d'être for a critical double feature -- especially because both make the same ...
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Theatre in Review: The Servant of Two Masters (Theatre for a New Audience)
For pure magic, you can't do much better than the opening few minutes of Christopher Bayes' staging of Carlo Goldoni's commedia dell'arte classic. We begin in darkness; there is just enough light to show that scenic designer < ...
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Theatre in Review: Party People (The Public Theater/Anspacher Theater)
As the Trump Administration recruits staffers and Republican members of Congress salivate at the opportunity to undo any number of President Obama's achievements, the Public Theater is celebrating America's radical past. The title of ...
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Theatre in Review: Women of a Certain Age (The Public Theater/LuEsther Hall)
If Women of a Certain Age is the most powerful entry yet in Richard Nelson's trilogy, titled The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family, it's for reasons that I'm sure the playwright regrets. The ...
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