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  Theatre in Review: Wanted (James Earl Jones Theatre)
Angelica Cheri reportedly based the libretto for Wanted on her family history, and maybe that's the problem with this loud, sometimes baffling new musical. As a tale gets handed down over several generations, it ...
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Theatre in Review: Waiting for Lefty (Classic Stage Company)
Talk about populism: In addition to the Democratic electoral wipeout last week, Clifford Odets is suddenly the playwright of the moment; not bad for a guy who died in 1963. Still, few of his successors have offered a tougher ...
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Theatre in Review: the ripple, the wave that carried me home (Playwrights Horizons)
Water is the ruling metaphor in Christina Anderson's play, and I'm afraid she wades in too deeply, sometimes ending up in over her head. A compelling family drama lurks inside the ripple, the wave that carried me home ...
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Theatre in Review: Ms. Blakk for President (Vineyard Theatre)
This is the second major production of Ms. Blakk for President -- the first was at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago -- and it still feels as if it is in the process of becoming. Co-authors Tarell Alvin McCraney and Ti ...
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Theatre in Review: Tristan & Yseult (St. Ann's Warehouse)
Emma Rice calls herself a director and adaptor, words that don't begin to capture her achievements. Really, she's a tightrope walker: Her standard MO is to adapt a well-known property into a theatrical extravaganza that humorously ...
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Theatre in Review: Here There Are Blueberries (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)
"In surveys, people say that the least trusted parts of our society are the government, big business, and social media. One of the most trusted parts? Museums. And why? Because museums are fact-based." So says Sara Bloomfield, museum ...
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Theatre in Review: I Became We (Atlantic Theater Company)
A sixteen-person chorus comes onstage and, accompanied by a piano, sings, "I saw a segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live, called 'What Do You Know About the Female Body?" Well, that's something you haven't seen before, is it? A bigger ...
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Theatre in Review: Rope (The New Group/Theatre at St. Clement's)
Rope is a play loaded with secrets and furnished with psychological closets, and playwright Gordon Greenberg is bent on prying them open and exposing their contents. His rewrite of Patrick Hamilton's venerable ...
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Theatre in Review: 860 (Imperial Theatre)
For Billy Crystal, comedy and tragedy are two sides of a single mask, so it's no surprise his shows freely combine both elements. His first Broadway outing, 700 Sundays, was filled with warm, funny stories about his Long ...
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Theatre in Review: The Imaginary Invalid (Roundabout Theatre Company at Todd Haimes Theatre)
The Imaginary Invalid is a delightful contradiction: an outrageous farce delivered with Euclidean precision. Brandon J. Dirden's direction of Moliere's lusty spoof of those who practice the healing arts ...
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Theatre in Review: Specky Clark (Irish Arts Center)
If you're still in a Halloween mood, consider Specky Clark, a macabre theatre/dance piece, written, choreographed, and directed by Oona Doherty. It's more an anecdote than a fully worked-out story, equally inflected ...
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Theatre in Review: A Few Good Men (Lincoln Center Theatre/Vivian Beaumont Theater)
When court finally convenes, A Few Good Men generates some electricity, but the discovery phase could use some juice. Aaron Sorkin's military-legal drama, which had a decent run a few decades back, is a slick, ...
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Theatre in Review: The Heart (Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre)
Musical theatre is like modern architecture: Form follows function. (This fact is sadly ignored by the purveyors of jukebox and bio musicals, but what can you do? These are not the happiest of times.) Wise creatives know: If you take on ...
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Theatre in Review: Other Desert Cities (Hudson Theatre)
Broadway producers are like astrologers: They follow the stars. Thus, the current revival of Other Desert Cities draws on a quintet of luminaries from film, the stage, and video. Surprisingly, this is its least meticulous ...
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Theatre in Review: Livia: A Roman Tragedy (The Flea Theater)
Livia: A Roman Tragedy is a sermon for the stage, and playwright Paul David Young is preaching to the choir. His chosen mouthpiece is, I guess, a version of Livia Drusilla, wife of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, ...
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Theatre in Review: Aftermath (A.R.T. New York/Mezzanine Theatre)
An entire flock of chickens comes home to roost in Aftermath, a bombshell-packed family drama plagued by rookie errors. Playwright David Zax, a journalist with a couple of film and television projects in development, ...
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Theatre in Review: Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen (The Night Egg at the Culture Club)
If you're going to the trouble of visiting a bordello, you should have a little pleasure, a quality hard to find in Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen. This new musical, based on a manga graphic novel, unfolds mostly inside The ...
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Theatre in Review: Phyl (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)
Phyl introduces us to two women you should know better: Cicely Hamilton and Lily Ganser. Hamilton is best known for Diana of Dobson's, a charming 1908 comedy staged at the Mint a quarter-century ago. (I ...
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Theatre in Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button/Triumph (Public Theater)
There's nothing like a musical that knows what it is about, has a style all its own, and a knack for storytelling, qualities that sometimes seem vanishingly rare these days. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button wants to charm ...
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Theatre in Review: Copperfield! The New Musical (The Duke on 42nd Street)
People willtry to make a musical out of David Copperfield, but Charles Dickens' hero remains uncooperative, standing stalwart against those who would turn him and his story into song-and-dance entertainment. The above ...
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