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  Theatre in Review: Nice Girl (Labyrinth Theater Company/Bank Street Theater)
The nice girl of the title of Melissa Ross' new play is Josephine Rosen and, when we meet her, she seems living proof that nice girls finish last. In fact, her life is starting to look something like a prison sentence, with no time ...
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Theatre in Review: What I Did Last Summer (Pershing Square Signature Center)
World War II is drawing to a close, but the hostilities are just getting started in What I Did Last Summer. On one side is 14-year-old Charlie; on the other side is everybody else, a state of affairs that will be familiar to ...
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Theatre in Review: New Country (Cherry Lane Studio)
The title New Country seems to suggest that the play is a comment on the moral bankruptcy of the Nashville music industry, although it may be that I'm giving it too much credit. Not that it is the sort of play to inspire ...
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Theatre in Review: Tuesdays at Tesco's (59E59)
A grocery aisle becomes a block on the Via Dolorosa for the narrator and main character of Tuesdays at Tesco's. The title refers to the weekly ritual by which the middle-aged Pauline visits her widowed father, cleans his house, and ...
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Theatre in Review: The Way We Get By (Second Stage)
When did Neil LaBute become a romantic? It's certainly true that, in the last few years -- probably since Reasons to Be Pretty, in 2008 -- a new warmth has steadily crept into his writing, along with a diminished interest in ...
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Theatre in Review: The 35th Marathon of One-Act Plays -- Series A (Ensemble Studio Theatre)
Musical theatre invades EST's one-act marathon, with two of the five entries in Series A relying on song and dance. The program's highlight is the opener, I Battled Lenny Ross. Ross was a child prodigy who, in ...
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Theatre in Review: Don Juan (Pearl Theatre Company)
Considering that his name has become a symbol for womanizers everywhere, it's a little surprising that we don't see more productions of Don Juan. Perhaps it's because Mozart has superseded Molière in the popular imagination. ...
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Theatre in Review: The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek (Signature Theatre)
A large boulder occupies stage center of Christopher H. Barreca's set, and it is just about the only thing in Athol Fugard's new drama that remains untouched by the relentless march of time. The play's title refers to the ...
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Theatre in Review: Search: Paul Clayton, The Man Who Loved Bob Dylan (Triad Theatre)
A forgotten piece of modern musical history is unearthed in Larry Mollin's new play. Today, Paul Clayton is probably known to only a handful of enthusiasts, but in the 1950s he was one of the leaders of the folk song pack. ...
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Theatre in Review: The Duchamp Syndrome (The Play Company/Piedad Teatro)
"Originality is overrated," says Tony, one of the creatures running around in The Duchamp Syndrome, but Antonio Vega's play is its own best refutation of that argument. I think I can safely guarantee that you've never ...
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Theatre in Review: One Hand Clapping (House of Orphans/59E59)
One Hand Clapping is the title of Lucia Cox's play, adapted from a novel by Anthony Burgess; it is also the title of a West End play attended by Howard and Janet Shirley, characters invented by Burgess. "It's ...
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Theatre in Review: Forever (New York Theatre Workshop)
Forever begins with Dael Orlandersmith making a pilgrimage to the famous Paris cemetery Père Lachaise. Clearly, not the Eiffel Tower - Louvre tourist type, she has come to commune with the spirits of the many great ...
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Theatre in Review: Cool Hand Luke (Godlight Theatre Company/59E59)
The talented people at Godlight Theatre Company don't merely adapt novels to the stage; they take a book, boil it down to its essence, and reimagine it in strikingly theatrical terms. There's nothing fussy or overly literary about this ...
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Theatre in Review: ToasT (The Public Theater)
Playwright Lemon Andersen's poetic drama is set in the days leading up to the Attica prison riots in 1971, days that he fills with lively, if sometimes opaque, conversation. Andersen is a spoken word artist -- the Public presented ...
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Theatre in Review: Dinner With the Boys (Theatre Row)
The new season is but days old and already we have a contender for the most indescribable offering of the year. The jaw-dropper in question is Dinner With the Boys, in which Dan Lauria, a fine character actor, turns ...
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Theatre in Review: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Red Bull Theater/The Duke n 42nd Street)
"That marriage seldom's good/Where the bride banquet so begins in blood." In summing up John Ford's blood-soaked tragedy, you can't do much better than to quote from the text itself. Even among the Jacobean playwrights, whose frank ...
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Theatre in Review: The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Fiasco Theater/Theatre for a New Audience)
With its compact, intimate staging, Fiasco Theater has managed the near-impossible: The company has rescued The Two Gentleman of Verona.
At the intermission of the performance I attended, the woman sitting next to me said to her ...
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Theatre in Review: The Visit (Lyceum Theatre)
We've seen Chita Rivera enliven so many musicals with her firecracker personality that it's remarkable to experience what she can achieve with her presence alone. Stillness -- alluring, malign, and carrying a hint of brimstone -- is ...
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Theatre in Review: Something Rotten! (St. James Theatre)
We've all heard of shows that peak too early, but never so soon as the middle of the first act -- yet that's the dubious new record set by Something Rotten!. We have already been presented with Nick and Nigel Bottom, ...
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Theatre in Review: Trash Cuisine (Belarus Free Theatre/La MaMa)
The human impulse to treat other living things as objects to be destroyed is explored with blazing clarity in Trash Cuisine Using a combination of movement, personal testimony, and pitch black comedy employing food as a ...
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