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  Theatre in Review: Noises Off (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre)
There are so many delightful people doing so many hilarious things in Noises Off that one hardly knows where to begin. Then again, how can one not start with Andrea Martin? As Dotty Otley, erstwhile television star ...
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Theatre in Review: Escuela (Under the Radar/Public Theater)
Escuela is a sometimes gripping, sometimes perplexing exercise in what might be called the banality of armed revolution. Guillermo Calderón's script looks at a group of left-wing activitists in Chile, circa 1987, who ...
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Theatre in Review: The Screwtape Letters (Fellowship for Performing Arts/Pearl Theatre)
Never let it be said that the people at Fellowship for Performing Arts fail to give the devil his due. As "His Abysmal Sublimity Screwtape," an emissary of Satan who provides advice to junior demons assigned to drive human souls to ...
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Theatre in Review: The Institute of Memory (Under the Radar/Public Theater)
Do any of us ever really know our parents? Possibly not; to some extent we are doomed never to fully understand the experiences that shaped them long before we existed. If you agree with this notion, just imagine how Lars Jan feels ...
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Theatre in Review: The Offending Gesture (The Tank/3-Legged Dog/Connelly Theater)
Here's the stranger-than-fiction premise of The Offending Gesture: In 1941, a Finnish businessman named Tor Borg owned a dog named Jackie, who, upon hearing the words "Hitler" or "Heil Hitler" -- accounts vary -- raised a paw ...
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Theatre in Review: Tappin' Thru Life (New World Stages)
In Midtown, it's hot these nights, thanks to this swinging little revue starring Maurice Hines. We'll get to him in a moment, but let's first note that one reason Tappin' Thru Life is such a slick and enjoyable ...
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Theatre in Review: The Changeling (Red Bull Theater/Lucille Lortel Theatre)
Believe me, you've never met anyone quite like Beatrice-Joanna, the leading lady -- heroine is far too kind a word -- of The Changeling. Unhappy with her fiancé, she has him murdered, enlisting the grotesquely ugly servant, ...
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Theatre in Review: Sanctuary (Theatre Row)
Susanne Sulby feels bad about the state of the world -- I mean really, really bad. It apparently started when she turned on the TV, sometime in the '90s, and saw news reports about the torture of Albanians in Kosovo. Since ...
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Theatre in Review: Fiddler on the Roof (Broadway Theatre)
Even as auteur directors like Ivo van Hove earn acclaim for radically reconfiguring classic texts, let's consider Bartlett Sher, who, with a few small tweaks, has given us a new production of that oft-revived classic, Fiddler ...
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Theatre in Review: American Dance Machine (Joyce Theater)
Welcome back to American Dance Machine, the company created to explore our almost impossibly rich heritage of musical theatre choreography. Originally founded in the late '70s by Lee Becker Theodore, a Jerome Robbins dancer (in the ...
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Theatre in Review: Phalaris' Bull: Solving the Riddle of the Great Big World (Theatre Row)
A better title for Steven Friedman's solo show might have been The Consolations of Philosophy, if it hadn't already been taken by both Boethius and Alain de Botton. Like them, Friedman wants you to know that the pursuit of ...
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Theatre in Review: These Paper Bullets! (Atlantic Theater Company)
If playwrights can't stop themselves from raiding Shakespeare's larder, they should be more careful about what they steal. (Don't pretend that this doesn't go on all the time: I've lost track of how many musicals have been made out of Tw ...
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Theatre in Review: 2 Across (St. Luke's Theatre)
A crossword fanatic who can't finish the Monday puzzle? I'm afraid that's the level of reality that we get in 2 Across. For you non-aficionados, the Monday puzzle is so simple your cat could probably solve it; each day, the puzzle ...
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Theatre in Review: The Count Meets the Duke (59E59)/That Physics Show! (The Playroom)
'Tis the season for all sorts of special interest shows; here's a pair that will appeal to very different constituencies. It's always a livelier holiday season when Peter and Will Anderson are around. Twin brothers and jazz ...
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Theatre in Review: MotherStruck! (Lynn Redgrave Theater)
There's been a lot of discussion lately about alternative energy sources, and, surprisingly, nobody has mentioned StaceyAnn Chin. A visit to the Lynn Redgrave Theater will correct that: The woman is a wonder, a fierce, bantam figure ...
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Theatre in Review: Marjorie Prime (Playwrights Horizons)
Jordan Harrison's eerie, unsettling new play presents a vision of human intimacy being reshaped by modern technology. Marjorie is a lady of 85 years, a widow, who lives alone -- with her late husband, Walter. Let me explain: In the ...
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Theatre in Review: Once Upon a Mattress (Transport Group/Abrons Art Center)
As much as we love them, stars are a terrible problem. For one thing, there's the challenge of finding the right star for a role. For another, there's the problem of a star performance that continues to cast a shadow long after closing ...
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Theatre in Review: Plaid Tidings (York Theatre Company)
Twenty-five years after their Off Broadway debut, the men of Forever Plaid are still dead -- but they still amuse from time to time. In case you've forgotten -- or never knew -- the conceit of Stuart Ross' musical ...
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Theatre in Review: Take Care (The Flea Theater)
After Take Care was over, I left the theatre stained with blood. Okay, it was fake blood, and it was just some splotches on my sweater and jeans, but my warning to you, theatregoer, is this: If you attend, don't dress up. If ...
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Theatre in Review: The Golden Bride (National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene/Museum of Jewish Heritage)
Cheers to the good folks at the Folksbiene for disinterring this 1923 operetta, which proves to be charming in every respect. A hit in its day -- the program states that it was one of fourteen Yiddish productions available on the night ...
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