|
  Theatre in Review: Prodigal Son (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
If you're going to write a memory play, the memories have to be sharper and more detailed that those that John Patrick Shanley has summoned up for Prodigal Son. The playwright says in a program note that he has drawn ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Buried Child (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Center)
At first glance, it looks like Scott Elliott's production of Sam Shepard's family evisceration is going to be a memorable one. When we enter the theatre, the lights are already up on Derek McLane's set, as vivid an ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Smart People (Second Stage)
Does anyone in America escape the net of race? Not in Smart People: The characters in Lydia R. Diamond's new play, all of them members of the Harvard University community, keep coming up against the many ways -- both ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Please Continue (Ensemble Studio Theatre)
Scientists often use the word "elegant" to praise a theory or an experiment, but it's the last word one can apply to Please Continue, a science-minded drama hampered by an awkward construction concept. Taking hold of two ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Mike Birbiglia: Thank God for Jokes (Lynn Redgrave Theater)
The title of Mike Birbiglia's latest piece perplexes: Whoever thinks of him telling jokes? Shaggy dog stories? Sure. Tales within tales within tales, like so many Russian dolls? Certainly. Bizarrely wandering narratives that ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Grand Paradise (Third Rail Projects)
So there I was in Bushwick the other night, lying on a table with cucumber slices on my eyes, being spoken to soothingly by a handsome young man who had previously massaged my hands with moisturizer. This was, I assure you, a professional ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Broadway and the Bard (Theatre Row)
The other night at Theatre Row -- quite unexpectedly -- I fell into a time warp. It happened when Len Cariou began to sing "There's Always One You Can't Forget." He had introduced the number -- music by Charles Strouse and ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Wedge Horse (Fault Line Theatre/IATI Theater)
Three young people are caught in the blowback of 9/11 in The Wedge Horse, a production that serves as a calling card for any number of up-and-coming talents. Maddy, Carlos, and Bobby are high school students from Baldwin, ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Washer/Dryer (Ma-Yi Theater Company/Theatre Row)
Are they teaching Norman Krasna in the playwriting programs these days? That's one explanation for Washer/Dryer, a play that, except for its multicultural cast of characters, is a dead ringer for such old-fashioned mid ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: O, Earth (Foundry Theatre/HERE)
"A lot of things have happened since Thornton Wilder wrote Our Town," notes one of the characters in O, Earth. I'll say. For one thing, Emily Webb and George Gibbs, the young couple at the heart of Wilder's masterpiece ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Sojourners (The Playwrights Realm/Peter Jay Sharp Theater)
It's always a pleasure to come across a playwright with a fresh set of characters and a compelling tale to tell; Mfoniso Udofia pulls together four people -- three of them Nigerian immigrants -- in Houston circa 1978 for a funny-sad ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Creditors (Phoenix Theatre Ensemble/The Wild Project)
Some people call Creditors a play; I see it as a series of boxing matches in which all three contestants sooner or later are dealt an emotional knockout. Nobody knows the strategies of intimate infighting like August ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: A Dream of Red Pavilions (Pan Asian Repertory Theatre/Theatre Row)
Talk about ambition: A display outside the theatre housing Pan Asian Rep's current production notes that the novel from which it is drawn is twice the length of War and Peace -- which goes a long way toward explaining the loose ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: I and You (Merrimack Repertory Theatre/59E59)
I and You starts out on a relatively mundane note, only to get more perplexing by the minute. Caroline, a teenager, is alone in her bedroom when she receives an unwelcome surprise visit from Anthony, a young man from her ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Burial at Thebes (Irish Repertory Theatre/DR2 Theatre)
I've never been so happy to see Tiresias in my life. As usual, whenever the blind poet shows up, it signals bad news for the members of the House of Oedipus -- The Burial at Thebes is a new version of Antigone by the ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Wide Awake Hearts (Birdland Theatre/59E59)
The film director at the center of Brendan Gall's new play is an uncompromising artist: In pursuit of his muse, he doesn't spare himself, his wife, his leading man -- and certainly not the audience at 59E59. He's making a film that ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Our Mother's Brief Affair (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
In the early stretches of Our Mother's Brief Affair, I thought, Linda Lavin should be grateful for playwright Richard Greenberg. A little later, I realized I had it backwards. As Anna, an aging and rather frail ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Skeleton Crew (Atlantic Theater Stage 2)
Remember the old adage, "As GM goes, so goes the nation?" In Dominique Morisseau's tense, involving new drama, GM is going off a cliff, along with the rest of the auto industry. It's 2008, the year of the Wall Street meltdown and, ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Key Change (Open Clasp/4th Street Theatre)
It's been quite a season for plays about prison. Whorl Inside a Loop took us inside a writing workshop for male inmates whose prospects for parole were shaky at best. Phyllida Lloyd's production of Henry IV presented ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: LaBute New Theater Festival (St. Louis Actors' Studio/59E59)
Since this is the LaBute New Theater Festival, it's fitting that the most striking offering is the most LaButian: G. D. Kimble's Two Irishmen are Digging a Ditch, which has the audacity and twisty plotting that ...
|
