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  Theatre in Review: Richard II (Red Bull Theater/Astor Place Theatre)
In Craig Baldwin's revival of William Shakespeare's most lyrical play, the title character is a man in a cage. Baldwin, who edited and rearranged bits of the original text, begins with Richard, incarcerated and stripped to ...
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Theatre in Review: Archduke (Roundabout Theatre Company)
If Rajiv Joseph ever had a career in Major League Baseball, he would have been a pitcher; he certainly is a specialist in throwing curveballs. Surely the only playwright in existence to twice build works around the art of origami (< ...
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Theatre in Review: The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire (The Civilians/Vineyard Theatre)
If you believe the above title is awkward, wait until you see the play. Anne Washburn, who often works by indirection, has imagined the members of a farm collective living somewhere in California. Their reasons are mysterious: The ...
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Theatre in Review: The Queen of Versailles (St. James Theatre)
It's almost a tradition: Every couple of decades, Stephen Schwartz writes a musical starring Kristin Chenoweth as a morally compromised heroine. Okay, it's happened exactly twice, but the last time was Wicked, and you ...
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Theatre in Review: Reunions (City Center Stage II)
It's a heterodox opinion, I know, but not everything needs to become a musical. This proposition is proved in duplicate at City Center with Reunions, which musicalizes two notable one-act plays. Indeed, it is an ideal lab: ...
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Theatre in Review: 44: The Musical (Daryl Roth Theatre)
If elected to Congress, I will endeavor to pass the Save US Presidents from Musical Theatre Act. Designed to protect audiences rather than politicians, it will outlaw the concept, creation, and composition of musicals about sitting and/or ...
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Theatre in Review: Fixing Frankie (Little Red Engine Theatre at ART/New York Theatres)
Frankie Scordato doesn't need fixing so much as he could use a little fleshing out. Joe Langworth and Steve Marzullo's new musical is the story of a gay man's progress from wide-eyed youth to haunted middle age, remaining ...
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Theatre in Review: Queens (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
These are pugilistic days at Manhattan Theatre Club. On Broadway, the recently closed Punch focuses on the many repercussions following a blow to the head delivered during a gang fight. Queens begins with Renia, a ...
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Theatre in Review: Pygmalion (Gingold Theatrical Group/Theatre Row)
The first glimpse of Lindsay Genevieve Fuori's set for Pygmalion disconcerts: It's a pop-up pen-and-ink sketch of an august structure in the Classical style, surrounded by fluffy clouds, with none other than George ...
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Theatre in Review: Kyoto (Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater)
Kyoto, now commanding the Newhouse stage with uncommon fire, is the type of production that makes Lincoln Center Theater indispensable -- a sweeping, large-canvas drama about contemporary political history. (Other recent ...
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Theatre in Review: The Wasp (Little Engine Theater)/The Lucky Ones (Boomerang Theatre Company)
Fraught female relationships are the theme of the week, with two different plays focusing on connections that are, to put it mildly, freighted with considerable baggage. In each case, the situations have life-or-death implications. ...
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Theatre in Review: Little Bear Ridge Road (Booth Theatre)
Like many of Samuel D. Hunter's plays, Little Bear Ridge Road is a miniature that contains multitudes. Focusing on a trio of characters in his home state of Idaho, a stretch of the Northwest he has made his personal ...
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Theatre in Review: Liberation (James Earl Jones Theatre)
The good news: Liberation -- to my mind, the best new American play of last season -- has transferred to Broadway in tiptop shape. The even better news: It has arrived with its superb cast intact. And, eight months after it ...
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Theatre in Review: Endgame (Druid/Irish Arts Center)
Garry Hynes' production of Samuel Beckett's classic study of stasis, oppression, and (quite possibly) the end of the world derives much of its effect from the yawning gap between the characters' grandiloquent delivery and ...
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Theatre in Review: Did You Eat? (Ma-Yi Theater/Public Theater)
The solo piece Did You Eat? is the first entry in Zoe Kim's proposed trilogy about hunger, and it begins on a wryly amusing note, as she translates her mother's "love language," in which deeper concerns are shrouded ...
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Theatre in Review: Let's Love! (Atlantic Theater Company)/Dreadful Episodes (59E59)
We've had a run on short-form theatre this week, with two attractions that combine playlets and/or vignettes with musical interludes. I hate to use the "R" word; let's call them revue-adjacent. In each case, such flexible formats provide ...
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Theatre in Review: Playing Shylock (Polonsky Shakespeare Center)
Playing Shylock is a rare (maybe the first) example of theatrical autofiction, a genre that comes with built-in issues: The great character actor Saul Rubinek is out to settle numerous scores -- involving political ...
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Theatre in Review: Other (Greenwich House Theatre)
Other begins on Ari'el Stachel's evening of triumph, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance in The Band's Visit. The after-party is a nightmare, however, with the actor ...
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Theatre in Review: Not Ready for Prime Time (The Newman Mills Theater at The Robert W. Wilson MCC)
There are only two things wrong with Not Ready for Prime Time, a comic drama about the birth of Saturday Night Live: It isn't very dramatic and isn't very funny.
Indeed, a situation that should be rife with tension ...
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Theatre in Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (The Resident Acting Company/Sheen Center)
Whatever else one can say about this staging of William Shakespeare's evergreen comedy, it has an amusing concept. This is A Midsummer Night's Dream "as told by the Mechanicals." The action unfolds in Peter Quince's ...
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