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  Theatre in Review: Blackout Songs (The Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater/Robert W. Wilson MCC Theatre)
In Blackout Songs, love and addiction are so inextricably linked that they come to seem like the same thing. The play, by Joe White -- well-known in the UK, less so here -- throws together a young couple at an AA ...
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Theatre in Review: Data (Lucille Lortel Theatre)
"Data is the language of our time. And like all languages, its narratives will be written by the victors." This statement, meant to reassure, is one of the most chilling in this new thriller, and that's saying something. It is delivered ...
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Theatre in Review: Watch Me Walk (Soho Rep/Peter Jay Sharp Theatre)
Anne Gridley is one angry woman. To be sure, she has plenty to be mad about; at times during this autobiographical piece, part of the Under the Radar Festival, I felt that a better title for Watch Me Walk might be I ...
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Theatre in Review: Ulysses (Elevator Repair Service/The Public Theater)
At the beginning of Elevator Repair Service's latest piece, presented as part of the Under the Radar Festival, Scott Shepherd enters and says, "Hello, and welcome to Ulysses. Get ready." Ready for what? In this case, the ...
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Theatre in Review: The Bookstore (New Jersey Repertory Company/59E59)
The weather outside is frightful. The world is going to hell in a handbasket. What better time for a little civilized amusement? For fast relief, try The Bookstore, a low-key yet beguiling tale of literary life among ...
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Theatre in Review: Bellow (Irish Arts Center/Under the Radar)
Bellow is a tricky one, all right. Ostensibly a celebration of Irish folk music, as played on the accordion by the musician Danny O'Mahony, it is, apparently, exactly the kind of show one expects from the Irish Arts ...
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Theatre in Review: The Disappear (Audible Theater at Minetta Lane Theatre)
Erica Schmidt, writer and director of The Disappear, includes a Cassandra-like warning in the script's explanatory notes; too bad that nobody has heeded it. It's about her protagonist, Benjamin Braxton, a fiftyish ...
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Theatre in Review: Bug (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
When I first saw Bug about twenty years ago, I found it a creepily effective but distasteful exploitation thriller, the stage equivalent of a Blumhouse horror film -- the kind released in early January for a quick buck. I ...
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Theatre in Review: Juxtapose: A Theatrical Shadow Box (Happenstance Theater/59E59)
Near the end of its eighty-minute running time, Juxtapose finds its feet, quite literally: Four cast members, male and female, none of them obviously trained in dance or in the first flush of youth, appear, sporting ...
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Theatre in Review: Picnic at Hanging Rock (Greenwich House Theater)
Of all the properties, literary or cinematic, that one might adapt to the musical stage, Picnic at Hanging Rock is among the strangest. Joan Lindsay's novel, published in 1967, is a classic of Australian literature. Peter ...
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Theatre in Review: Night Stories (The Wild Project)
If you've overdosed on holiday cheer and are of a literary turn of mind, you could do worse than Night Stories, a collection of pieces by the Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever. It is a full immersion in the dark side of the ...
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Theatre in Review: Picnic at Hanging Rock (Greenwich House Theater)
Of all the properties, literary or cinematic, that one might adapt to the musical stage, Picnic at Hanging Rock is among the strangest. Joan Lindsay's novel, published in 1967, is a classic of Australian literature. Peter ...
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Theatre in Review: Night Stories (The Wild Project)
If you've overdosed on holiday cheer and are of a literary turn of mind, you could do worse than Night Stories, a collection of pieces by the Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever. It is a full immersion in the dark side of ...
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Theatre in Review: Tartuffe (New York Theatre Workshop)
Venues create expectations: If New York Theatre Workshop is going to stage a Moliere classic, one quite reasonably expects something wild, even shocking. This is, after all, the company that presented Ivo van Hove's version of Th ...
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Theatre in Review: Masquerade
Welcome to the latest stop on the Andrew Lloyd Webber Reinvention Tour. Whatever new projects the composer may or may not have in the hopper -- no more Bad Cinderellas, please -- he is busily allowing others to repurpose his ...
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Theatre in Review: Predictor (AMT Theater)
A strong point of view is a good thing, to be sure, but a playwright should leave room for the audience to discover something. If fed too many cues, alienation will set in. This is the main problem with Predictor, ...
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Theatre in Review: Oklahoma Samovar (La MaMa)
There are four or five plays, all of them interesting, or perhaps a multigenerational novel in the mold of Edna Ferber or Belva Plain, rattling around inside Oklahoma Samovar. Crammed into two hours or so, the result is a ...
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Theatre in Review: "Anna Christie" (St. Ann's Warehouse)
One doesn't direct a Eugene O'Neill play; one wrestles with it, and, let me assure you, as writers go, he has a mean half-nelson. The problem is clear: No other playwright is as resistant to high-concept approaches or showy ...
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Theatre in Review: Marjorie Prime (Second Stage/Hayes Theater)
I'm sorry to say that we're finally catching up with Marjorie Prime. To be sure, Jordan Harrison's drama, in a production at Playwrights Horizons featuring Lois Smith and Lisa Emery, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer ...
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Theatre in Review: Slam Frank (Asylum NYC)
Has anyone told Cynthia Ozick about Slam Frank? You may recall that, in 1997, the noted novelist and essayist ignited a controversy in the pages of The New Yorker, suggesting that, given the frivolous and sentimental ...
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