|
  Theatre in Review: The Color Purple (Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre)
The Color Purple on Broadway -- again? Really? Honestly, it hasn't been gone long enough for us to miss it. However, John Doyle, the director who puts musicals on diets, slimming them down into intimate little soirees, ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: China Doll (Gerald S. Schoenfeld Theatre)
Something very odd has begun to happen, just recently, with David Mamet's plays: People are getting lost inside them. It first happened in 2012's The Anarchist, when Debra Winger, playing an unspecified representative of the ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Great Divorce/A Wilder Christmas)
It never occurred to me that people don't get into heaven not because God condemns them but because they can't stand the prospect of it. Oddly, I heard this point being made twice in two days, as I experienced a pair of back-to-back ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Lazarus (New York Theatre Workshop)
In Lazarus, New York Theatre Workshop has its first jukebox musical. It already had its first songbook musical in What's It All About?, a revue of inventively rearranged Burt Bacharach tunes. Lazarus, however, is more ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: New York Animals (Bedlam/New Ohio Theatre)
There are eight million stories in the naked city, and New York Animals can't manage to decently dramatize even one of them. The playwright, Steven Sater, has imagined a constellation of New Yorkers from various walks ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: School of Rock (Winter Garden Theatre)
In School of Rock, Andrew Lloyd Webber commits the most radical act of his career -- writing a show just for the fun of it. After years of turgid melodramas like Aspects of Love, The Woman in White, and
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Gigantic (Vineyard Theatre/Theatre Row)
At the intermission of Gigantic, my companion turned to me and remarked, "This is the quintessential New York Musical Theatre Festival show." In all my theatergoing days, I cannot remember such a swift, accurate summary. Gi ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Invisible Thread (Second Stage)
You don't need to see Hamilton to know that ambition and invention have returned to the musical theatre. There was a time, not so long ago, when it looked like we would be forever condemned to a steady diet of songbook shows, movie ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Pike St. (Epic Theatre Ensemble/Abrons Arts Center)
When we enter the theatre at Abrons Arts Center, Nilaja Sun is already on the stage, seated with her arms crossed, her fists folded up into her armpits, her eyes open yet unseeing. Every few seconds, her body twitches; that she can ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Night is a Room (Signature Theatre Company)
File this one under the heading "Be Careful What You Wish For." More than once over the years, I've wished that Naomi Wallace would simply write a play. Yes, I know, she has written plenty of them -- One Flea Spare, Things ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Important Hats of the Twentieth Century (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage 2)
Readers of Lighting&Sound America may be more than usually interested in Important Hats of the Twentieth Century for the reason that Carson Elrod, the play's leading man, has based his character on the costume ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Rose (Nora's Playhouse/Theatre Row)
Not very long into Laurence Leamer's new solo play about Rose Kennedy, the lady admits that, just recently -- it is July 1969 -- she has taken up reading Greek tragedies. She knows that she should favor Scripture -- later, ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Shadowland (Pilobolus/NYU Skirball Center)
You don't find many -- or any -- dance reviews in this column, but, for sheer mastery of a specific stage effect, Shadowland is hard to beat. 80-minute piece, created by Steven Banks, Robby Barnett, Renée ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Illusionists: Live on Broadway (Neil Simon Theatre)
For the second holiday season, Broadway is hosting this package of magic acts. Both a varied lot and a mixed bag, The Illusionists opens a window on how different artists approach their craft in the post-Siegfried and Roy ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Dada Woof Papa Hot (Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater)
The topics du jour, gay marriage and parenting and their discontents, get their latest workout in Peter Parnell's new play -- and you can't accuse him of not treating them with the seriousness and respect they deserve. While Mark Gerrard's ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Incident at Vichy (Signature Theatre)
In Incident at Vichy, the simple act of waiting becomes an exercise in terror. The setting of Arthur Miller's most intensely concentrated drama is "a place of detention" in the title city, the center of ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Nora (La Femme Theatre Productions/Cherry Lane Theatre)
In the end, it's the names attached to Nora that deceive. The prospect of seeing Ingmar Bergman's take on A Doll's House may raise unreasonable expectations: Surely the greatest Scandiniavian theatre and cinema ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: The Eternal Space (Theatre Row)
In case you were wondering, a picture really is better than a thousand words; at least, that's the case with The Eternal Space. The playwright, Justin Rivers, has focused on one of the great architectural crimes of the ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Promising (InProximity Theatre Company/Theatre Row)
Promising isn't; Michelle Elliot's new play takes what should be a sure-fire dramatic situation -- a New York city political sex scandal -- and fritters it away in an endless series of conversation. We are in the ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Steve (The New Group at Pershing Square Signature Center)
No flies on our playwrights: Only a few months since marriage equality has become the law of the land, we have two new plays, opening within ten days of each other, about what happens when the marriage battle is won, and gays and lesbians ...
|
