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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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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, ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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