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  Theatre in Review: Love and Money (Signature Theatre Company)
Cornelia Cunningham, the heroine of A. R. Gurney's latest comedy, hasn't had that much love in her life, and now she's getting rid of all her money. "I'm expiating my crime before I die," the elderly, widowed matron announces, ...
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Theatre in Review: A Delicate Ship (The Playwrights Realm/Peter Jay Sharp Theater)
If you're at home with the one you love on Christmas Eve and the doorbell rings, don't answer it. That's the moral I took away from A Delicate Ship, a rather implausible three-hander about what to do when the past ...
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Theatre in Review: Whorl Inside a Loop (Second Stage)
If you're looking for a sheer explosion of talent, you can't do much better than Whorl Inside a Loop, in which half a dozen black actors bring to life a roomful of convicts with lively, funny, harrowing, and thoroughly ...
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Theatre in Review: Sense of an Ending (59E59)
Playwright Ken Urban takes on the Hobbesian nightmare of the Rwanda genocide in Sense of an Ending, a kind of moral detective drama that manages to be simultaneously gripping and ultimately unsatisfying. Give him ...
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Theatre in Review: Mercury Fur (The New Group at Pershing Square Signature Center)
I'll say one thing about Mercury Fur: Nobody involved in it is trying to sugarcoat the pill of Philip Ridley's hard-boiled drama of survival at any price. The whole of the Linney Courtyard Theatre has been transformed by the ...
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Theatre in Review: Informed Consent (Primary Stages/Ensemble Studio Theatre)
There's nothing more painful than seeing a playwright tackle tough, thorny issues without the skill to bring their complexities to dramatic life. That's that sad case with Informed Consent, which, in 95 minutes, tries to ...
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Theatre in Review: John (Signature Theatre)
Annie Baker's plays constitute a kind of theatrical equivalent of the slow food movement; she assembles a few carefully chosen elements and lets them simmer at length, bringing them to a boil only when the time is right. The ...
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Theatre in Review: Hamilton (Richard Rodgers Theatre)
There's little to add to the rolling triumph that is Hamilton, except to note that it has expanded beautifully to fit the wider dimensions of the Richard Rodgers. Seeing it once again, it's easy to forget that, only a few ...
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Theatre in Review: Steve: A Docu-Musical (The New York Neo-Futurists/4th Street Theatre)
The digital age facilitates a bizarre songwriting collaboration in Steve: A Docu-Musical. Colin Summers, a lanky, paper-thin charmer with floppy hair, a mustache from the '70s, and a slightly wicked gleam in his eye, ...
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Theatre in Review: Cymbeline (New York Shakespeare Festival/Delacorte Theater)
In a way, Riccardo Hernandez's set design for Cymbeline gives us a preview of director Daniel Sullivan's approach to this problematic Shakespeare tragicomedy. A raised circular deck, surrounded by audience ...
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Theatre in Review: Ruthless! (St. Luke's Theatre)
It's summer camp season, what with Mrs. Smith's Broadway Cat-Tacular having had its brief, gaudy hour Off Broadway and now a revival of Ruthless!, a musical spoof best described as The Bad Seed meets Gypsy ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts 2015 Series B (59E59)
As usual, they're doing two editions of Summer Shorts at 59E59; too bad they only had enough good material for one. Series B features three plays, each one marked by a distinctly unpromising premise. The fact ...
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Theatre in Review: The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey (Westside Theatre)
Why bother to hire a cast when you can get James Lecesne? In The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey, he embodies most of the citizenry of a Jersey Shore town, including a hard-boiled cop, a nosy Mafia widow, a ...
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Theatre in Review: King Liz (Second Stage Uptown)
King Liz is a play about professional basketball, and Karen Pittman is its most valuable player. As the title character, a sports agent, Pittman, last seen as a devious dinner party guest in Disgraced, is a ...
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Theatre in Review: Antigona (Noche Flamenca/West Park Presbyterian Church)
Spanish dance meets Greek tragedy in Antigona, a flamenco retelling of the Antigone story. This is not the tightly focused ethical debate of Sophocles's drama or Jean Anouilh's modern adaptation; instead, in Martin ...
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Theatre in Review: Three Days to See (Transport Group)
Jack Cummings III, the author, needs to have a few sharp words with Jack Cummings III, the director. Cummings, the possessor of a fine theatrical imagination, has done excellent work with many playwrights but, just now, he is ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts Series A (59E59)
The focus is on the ladies in the first entry in this valuable summer festival of one-acts. Two of the three offerings feature very tricky male-female encounters and in both cases the woman drives the agenda. The third is an elegant, and ...
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Theatre in Review: Amazing Grace (Nederlander Theatre)
The action of Amazing Grace includes slave auctions, abductions, espionage, whippings, murders, various betrayals, an ocean-going battle, an underwater rescue, and a storm at sea. The question is: How can all of it be so dull ...
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Theatre in Review: The New York Story (Cherry Lane Theatre)
Colin Quinn grumpily and often hilariously pays tribute to a vanishing Gotham in The New York Story. Drawing on The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America, which was published last month, ...
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Theatre in Review: Threesome (Portland Center Stage and A Contemporary Theatre) (59E59)
In a kind of bizarre, Gregor Mendel-style experiment, Threesome grafts a coarse sex comedy onto an overwrought melodrama about women in the Muslim world. Act I is set in a bedroom where Leila and Rashid, who are lovers, are ...
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