|
  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 ...
|
|
|
|
|
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 ...
|
|
|
|
|
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 ...
|
|
|
|
|
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 ...
|
|
|
|
|
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 ...
|
|
|
|
|
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 ...
|
|
|
|
|
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, ...
|
|
|
|
|
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 ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Shows for Days (Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre)
To play a force of nature, you get a force of nature: In Shows for Days, Patti LuPone, who has excelled at impersonating divas named Evita, Reno, Norma, and Maria -- not to mention a certain furiously determined stage ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Mrs. Smith's Broadway Cat-Tacular (47th Street Theatre)
Like so many theatre people, David Hanbury moonlights. He has a perfectly respectable career as an actor, appearing in Goldoni, Molière, and Shakespeare at the Guthrie, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and Trinity Rep. But then there ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Scenes from an Execution (Potomac Theatre Project)
Even if Scenes from an Execution was a far less interesting production it would now be mandatory viewing, given the fact that Jan Maxwell -- one of the finest actresses now working on the New York stage -- has recently ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Awake and Sing! (NAATCO/The Public Theater)
It's time once again for a visit with the Berger family, the embattled Bronx clan caught in the stark, soul-killing vise of the Great Depression; this particular get-together is a little bit different, however, as the family of first- and ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Significant Other (Roundabout Theatre Company/Laura Pels Theatre)
Talk about being up-to-the-minute: Even as the Supreme Court was preparing to hand down its landmark decision about marriage equality, Roundabout opened Significant Other, a play that, in its own oddball way, is a kind of theatrical ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Judith: A Parting from the Body/Vinegar Tom (Potomac Theatre Project)
Potomac Theatre Project kicks off its season with a two-part meditation on women, history, and power, by the company's two favorite playwrights. This is not a double bill calculated to make new fans of Howard Barker or Caryl ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Happy Days (Theatre @ Boston Court/The Flea Theater)
"Another heavenly day." It's one of the most unbeatable opening lines in dramatic literature, not least because it is delivered by a woman buried up to her chest. She is Winnie, the indomitably cheery housewife who ritually counts her ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Of Good Stock (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
There's been a healthy debate lately about the lack of opportunities for women playwrights, with the group known as The Kilroys publishing lists of new works by women that should be seen. The debate seems to be paying off; last season saw ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Doctor Faustus (Classic Stage Company)
In Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe condemned his title character to hell. In Andrei Belgrader's production, Faustus is sent to Hellzapoppin'. Indeed, so much is going on, and so little of it has ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Guards at the Taj (Atlantic Theater)
Is it me, or are our playwrights becoming more devious? They're certainly becoming more ruthless. Suddenly, just recently, we're getting plays constructed like little tinder boxes, rigged to explode on opening; they leave one wondering how ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: Gloria (Vineyard Theatre)
Gloria is, quite possibly, the first play of real brilliance of this new season, and I'm not sure what I can tell you about it. The author, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, has constructed a bear trap of a play marked by a jaw ...
|
|
|
|
|
Theatre in Review: ADA/AVA (Manual Cinema/3LD Arts and Technology Center)
I know it's only June, but I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction: It is highly unlikely that this season will produce anything as odd and altogether original as the experiment in puppetry and shadow play known as ADA/AVA ...
|
