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  Theatre in Review: Becky Shaw (Second Stager/The Hayes Theater)
Gina Gionfriddo's glittering black diamond of a comedy, a bright light of the 2008-09 theatre season, returns, still brimming with scathingly unsentimental observations about class, dysfunctional families, and the advisability (or ...
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Theatre in Review: The Adding Machine (The New Group/Theatre at St. Clement's)
In The Adding Machine, Jennifer Tilly is a household demon, a walking aggravation, a nagging chatterbox, and one can't help loving her for it. As the aptly named Mrs. Zero, ensconced in her marital bed, draped in a ...
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Theatre in Review: Titanique (St. James Theatre)
I first saw Titanique during its early run in a tiny theatre located under a Chelsea grocery store; it was sloppy, scrappy, slapdash, and already a hit with its well-oiled gay target audience. (The laugh quotient, I assume, ...
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Theatre in Review: Scorched Earth (St. Ann's Warehouse)
Scorched Earth doesn't fully come to life until the dead start to talk. Before then, this piece, written, directed, and choreographed by the Irish theatre artist Luke Murphy, is a strange, if intriguing hybrid of crime ...
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Theatre in Review: Death of a Salesman (Winter Garden Theatre)
In Death of a Salesman, Nathan Lane gives us his Lear and Joe Mantello frames Arthur Miller's play not as the sorrows of one working stiff but the collapse of an entire way of life. Scholars have debated ...
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Theatre in Review: Dog Day Afternoon (August Wilson Theatre)
Dog Day Afternoon is most notable for merging the two trends driving Broadway today: the reliance on IP titles and the cultivation of star vehicles. It offers two major names in a play derived from a classic, Oscar-nominated ...
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Theatre in Review: Nicole Travolta is Doing Alright (Soho Playhouse)
For someone whose life until now has been a series of trainwrecks, Nicole Travolta is mighty good company. A demi-celebrity, thanks to a minor career in sitcoms, she is also the "nepo-niece" of a certain film star. Or, as she puts ...
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Theatre in Review: How My Grandparents Fell in Love (New Jersey Repertory Company/59E59)
One thing you can say about the characters in How My Grandparents Fell in Love: They keep their sunny sides up. Europe in 1933 may be on the fast track to hell, what with the rise of Fascism and all, but these lovers only ...
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Theatre in Review: Seagull: True Story (Mart Foundation at the Public Theater)
Seagull: True Story is dedicated to the proposition that exile is an artist's natural state, and who should know better than Alexander Molochnikov, the play's conceiver and director? He joined the Moscow Art Theatre as ...
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Theatre in Review: Titus Andronicus (Red Bull Theater at Pershing Square Signature Center)
If you plan to dine after this production, you'll want the tofu special. Titus Andronicus is a carnival of carnage, a nonstop parade of rape, mutilation, and murder, culminating in a banquet so stomach-churning it makes the ...
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Theatre in Review: No Singing in the Navy (Playwrights Horizons)
Maybe playwrights shouldn't contribute program notes; they can set you up for one kind of show, only to leave you bafflingly confronted with something different when the lights go up. Then again, the note for No Singing in the Navy
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Theatre in Review: Giant (Music Box Theatre)
A simple gesture causes the temperature to drop, precipitously, at the Music Box. Giant is a play about the care and feeding of sacred monsters, and the source of the onstage cold front is Roald Dahl, author of innumerable ...
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Theatre in Review: Public Charge (Public Theater)
A friend, describing the appeal of the HBO Max series The Pitt, calls it "competency porn," meaning it is about professionals acting professionally; it makes such a refreshing change from our daily headlines. You can apply the same ...
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Theatre in Review: My Joy is Heavy (New York Theatre Workshop)
My Joy is Heavy brings back the musical diarists, Shaun and Abigail Bengson, for update on their spiritual journey. Previously, Hundred Days explored a crisis, early in their marriage, while The Lucky ...
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Theatre in Review: Jesa (Ma-Yi Theater Company/Public Theater)
The title of Jeena Yi's play refers to a memorial service held for ancestors in Korean families, usually on the anniversary of their deaths. Yi corrals four mostly Southern California-based sisters to honor their late mother, with a ...
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Theatre in Review: Tru (House of the Redeemer)
Tru is a Yuletide tale, and the title character, Truman Capote, is its Ghost of Christmas Past, bent on haunting himself. It is 1975, and the best-selling author, ubiquitous talk-show guest, and party animal has crash-landed ...
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Theatre in Review: Monte Cristo (The York Theatre/Theatre at St. Jean's)
Seeing Monte Cristo the other night, I was oddly reminded of "Reader's Digest," a number by Betty Comden and Adolph Green from their nightclub days, applying the famous magazine's approach to classic novels. (The Reader's ...
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Theatre in Review: Cold War Choir Practice (MCC Theater/Clubbed Thumb/Page 73)
If the Thirties were, as W. H. Auden insisted, "a low dishonest decade," the Eighties were all about agita, not least because of persistent nuclear jitters. For those who were there, a visit to MCC Theatre brings it all crashing back, ...
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Theatre in Review: Ulster American (Irish Repertory Theatre)
The main takeaway from Ulster American: Hell hath no fury like Geraldine Hughes scorned. As Ruth Davenport, a Belfast-born playwright at the mercy of a narcissistic, boneheaded Hollywood star and a craven British ...
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Theatre in Review: Every Brilliant Thing (Hudson Theatre)
Every Brilliant Thing centers on a list, compiled by the play's protagonist, of the details that make life worth living, and if Daniel Radcliffe isn't on it, that needs to be rectified immediately. Whatever you think ...
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