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  Theatre in Review: The Taming of the Shrew (Delacorte Theater)
In the program notes for the new production at the Delacorte Public Theater, artistic director Oskar Eustis says that he has never before produced The Taming of the Shrew because "I have never been able to get behind the ...
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Theatre in Review: Out of the Mouths of Babes (Cherry Lane Theatre)
Practically speaking, it would be almost impossible to cast Judith Ivey and Estelle Parsons as frenemies with a complex shared past involving the same man and not get some laughs -- although playwright Israel Horovitz ...
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Theatre in Review: Confusions (Brits Off Broadway/59E59)
In "Gosforth's Fête," the funniest of Alan Ayckbourn's quintet of one-acts, a village parish event -- a sedate little do consisting of games, tea and cakes, and a speech by a local dignitary -- collapses into anarchy, thanks to news ...
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Theatre in Review: I'll Say She Is (Connelly Theatre)
Let us pause to consider the persistence of Groucho Marx. Only yesterday, I read a piece by the Chicago Tribune columnist Heidi Stevens, in which she noted that her kids considered some of her favorite films from the '80s and ...
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Theatre in Review: Hello Dillie! (Brits Off Broadway/59E59)
If you're looking for a cabaret entertainment with the fizz and bittersweet kick of a gin and tonic, consider Dillie Keane's intimate get-together at 59E59. A member of the music/comedy trio Fascinating Aida, she seems to be a ...
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Theatre in Review: You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (York Theatre Company)
Can we invite the adults back into the room? The good people at the York Theatre Company have come up with the idea of doing the beloved musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown with a cast of kids -- and, I am sorry to say, ...
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Theatre in Review: Himself and Nora (Minetta Lane Theatre)
A musical about James Joyce and Nora Barnacle? As the great man himself might say, Oh, Jaysus. Not that there isn't rich material in the story of the man who wrote Ulysses and his feisty life partner. You can fairly say it is loaded ...
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Theatre in Review: The Block (Working Theater)
Working Theater has come up with an intriguing plan, assigning dedicated creative teams to come up with plays about each of New York's five boroughs. First up is Dan Hoyle's The Block, and, in many ways, it is a thing ...
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Theatre in Review: Incognito (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
Incognito teems with so many people and plotlines that one's brain sometimes struggles to take them all in: For example, there's the real-life character Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Albert ...
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Theatre in Review: Shining City (Irish Repertory Theatre)
Conor McPherson's plays are fragile things -- hothouse blooms, really -- and when it comes to their care and feeding, the Irish Rep really has the knack. I didn't see the company's acclaimed revival of The Weir, but it did ...
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Theatre in Review: Indian Summer (Playwrights Horizons)
In Indian Summer, playwright Gregory S. Moss imagines a sunny, sandy beach in Rhode Island and populates it with four characters, each in his or her own way a kind of displaced person. He organizes three of them into a ...
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Theatre in Review: A Funny Thing Happened.... (MCC Theater/Lucille Lortel Theatre)
The playwright Halley Feiffer operates under a strict policy: No prisoners will be taken. Even her titles can scald: How to Make Friends and Kill Them was a sadistic, skin-crawling exercise in mean-girl tactics. I'm Gonna ...
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Theatre in Review: Radiant Vermin (Brits Off Broadway/59E59)
When the characters in a Philip Ridley play enter and frankly admit that they've done something "horrible" to obtain their dream house, one instinctively reaches to fasten one's seat belt. Ridley's last New York production, Mercur ...
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Theatre in Review: A Persistent Memory (Theatre Row)
I understand that David Huntington, the protagonist of A Persistent Memory, is confused, but must the audience be lost in the dark with him? Jackob G. Hofmann aims to takes us inside David's fractured consciousness, ...
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Theatre in Review: The Judas Kiss (Brooklyn Academy of Music/Harvey Theater)
Oscar Wilde died for your sins: This is the apparent theme of David Hare's play about the great disgraced Irish playwright. The Judas Kiss focuses on two key moments in Wilde's downfall: The first act, set in a ...
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Theatre in Review: Hadestown (New York Theatre Workshop)
One enters New York Theatre Workshop to find the auditorium entirely reconfigured; instead of its customary end-stage arrangement, the audience is seated arena-style, in a series of concentric circles that step down to a smallish playing ...
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Theatre in Review: Signature Plays (Pershing Square Signature Center)
Few companies have supported such a broad range of playwrights -- from the newest voices to the most established names -- as Signature Theatre. It's not too much to say that, in its early years, Signature helped to revive the fortunes of ...
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Theatre in Review: A Doll's House/The Father (Theatre for a New Audience)
"The woman question," the burning 19th-century debate about the correct place of women in society, reverberates throughout both productions currently running in repertory at Theatre for a New Audience/Polonsky Shakespeare Center, but, ...
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Theatre in Review: Paramour (Lyric Theatre)
It's no secret that Cirque du Soleil, having conquered the rest of the world, has long yearned to colonize New York. Various proposals for permanent venues in the city have been floated, without success, and the company has worked ...
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Theatre in Review: Peer Gynt (Classic Stage Company)
The John Doyle era at Classic Stage Company begins with Peer Gynt, in a production, adapted and directed by Doyle, that is handsome to look at, well-cast, and a total bore. Henrik Ibsen's original play is a ...
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