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  Theatre in Review: Doctor Zhivago (Broadway Theatre)
I hate to point out the obvious, but when a musical begins with three funerals in a row, trouble is probably lurking in the wings. That's the case with Doctor Zhivago, which moves swiftly from one harrowing situation to ...
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Theatre in Review: The Tailor of Inverness (Dogstar Theatre Company/59E59)
For the first third of its brief running time, The Tailor of Inverness appears to be a fairly routine example of the theatre of testimony, a moderately interesting account of a Polish survivor of World War II -- but wait a ...
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Theatre in Review: Hamlet (Classic Stage Company)
It's a fine thing when an actor tries to stretch himself, but if you're going to tackle the biggest and most challenging role in the classical repertory, surely you need to prepare. Did nobody suggest that Peter Sarsgaard, a fine ...
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Theatre in Review: Finding Neverland (Lunt-Fontanne Theatre)
As you probably know, Finding Neverland tells the story of how James M. Barrie came to write Peter Pan, the story of the boy who wouldn't grow up. As it happens, Finding Neverland, the musical, won't grow up, ...
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Theatre in Review: Wolf Hall, Parts I and II (Winter Garden Theatre)
Hilary Mantel's world-domination plan continues apace; having penned two best-selling novels -- Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies -- which were turned into West End hits and also a popular BBC series, she now adds ...
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Theatre in Review: Iowa (Playwrights Horizons)
Iowa is billed as a new musical play, but this is a misnomer, since it is only nominally musical and it certainly isn't a play. Defining it is a tricky business; let's call it the biggest head-scratcher of the season and leave it at ...
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Theatre in Review: Skylight (Golden Theatre)
It's remarkable how much casting can affect a play: When David Hare's Skylight opened on Broadway nearly 20 years ago, was it this funny, this pointed, this exacting in its analysis of the breakup of a love affair -- and, by ...
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Theatre in Review: Underland (terraNOVA Collective/59E59)
It's not often that a playwright sets out to mystify an audience as resolutely as Alexandra Collier does in Underland. The setting is "a small, dusty town in the middle of Australia," and believe me, this Underland
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Theatre in Review: Hand to God (Booth Theatre)
I'm late to this party -- this is the third New York production of Robert Askins' play -- so you may already know that Hand to God is the demon sock-puppet play. Then again, "party" hardly seems like the right word. "Walpurgis ...
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Theatre in Review: Clinton, the Musical (New World Stages)
Clinton, the Musical is a lot like Clinton, the Administration: initially hope-inducing, then by turns farcical, crass, and embarrassing. In providing us with a satirical recap of Bill Clinton's two tumultuous terms in the ...
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Theatre in Review: Buzzer (The Public Theater)
A professional couple moves into a changing neighborhood, exposing a minefield of prejudices and resentments in Tracey Scott Wilson's tense, suspenseful new play. This is gentrification with a twist: Jackson, a successful, Ivy ...
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Theatre in Review: Gigi (Neil Simon Theatre)
That nice little Parisienne Gigi may have had some growing pains -- who hasn't? -- but, having arrived at the Neil Simon, she really is rather fetching. The word from Washington, where Gigi tried out, was that the show was ...
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Theatre in Review: Cry, Trojans! (Troilus and Cressida) (The Wooster Group/St. Ann's Warehouse)
In Cry, Trojans!, the artists at The Wooster Group have achieved something remarkable: They have managed to make Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida even more alienating and hard to follow than it already is. ...
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Theatre in Review: The Undeniable Sound of Right Now (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater/Women's Project)
You can't be a rock rebel forever, nor can you live on the cutting edge without sooner or later falling off. These inarguable propositions are explored with wit and perception in Laura Eason's new play. Such thoughts are plaguing ...
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Theatre in Review: Music Hall (TUTA Theatre Chicago/59E59)
In Music Hall, three male performers recall their lives on the road with a diva known simply as The Artiste. One of them stands in for The Artiste -- or maybe he has been The Artiste all along; I was never sure. Is the actor < ...
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Theatre in Review: The Heidi Chronicles (Music Box Theatre)
It has been more than a quarter of a century since we first made the acquaintance of Heidi Holland, art historian, essayist, and symbol of a generation -- and, like every other Baby Boomer, she's not getting any younger. You could say the ...
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Theatre in Review: Small Mouth Sounds (Ars Nova Theatre)
Bess Wohl certainly is one intrepid playwright: in Small Mouth Sounds, she assembles six rather woebegone spiritual seekers at a Buddhist retreat house where the teacher -- an offstage voice piped in through the sound ...
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Theatre in Review: Posterity (Atlantic Theater)
Is an artist's career, no matter how celebrated, necessarily built on sand? In a life devoted to the creation of art, does the verdict of history matter? These are the questions nagging at the characters in Posterity. ...
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Theatre in Review: On the Twentieth Century (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre)
All aboard at the Roundabout: The Twentieth Century Limited is once again leaving the station, booked with a full complement of chiselers, con artists, monomaniacs, and other forms of show folk. Inside a gleaming art deco train racing from ...
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Theatre in Review: Lonesome Traveler (59E59)
Lonesome Traveler offers a bountiful examination of folk music in its years of mainstream popularity, beginning in the late 1920s, when folklorists began recording and preserving the music of Appalachian Mountain dwellers, through ...
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