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  Theatre in Review: Irishtown (Irish Repertory Theatre)
Theatre people certainly have it in for their own these days. On Broadway, Smash follows the development of a new musical about Marilyn Monroe, which spins out of control when the leading lady takes on distinctly Monroe-ish ...
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Theatre in Review: Hold Me in the Water (Playwrights Horizons)
In Hold Me in the Water, Ryan J. Haddad gets the star entrance he has long deserved. Rising on an elevator -- something you don't see every day at Playwrights Horizons -- he greets us ebulliently with "Hello, Darlings!" ...
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Theatre in Review: Grief Camp (Atlantic Theater Company)/Becoming Eve (NY Theatre Workshop)
It is no small accomplishment to populate a stage filled with grieving young people and then render them almost entirely uninteresting and unsympathetic. But this is the dubious achievement of Grief Camp. Debuting playwright < ...
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Theatre in Review: Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
The ovations come early and often at the Friedman these nights. The first is ignited by Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga merely taking the stage, a sure sign that the audience is already wired. Of course, the ladies do not ...
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Theatre in Review: John Proctor is the Villain (Booth Theatre)
In her charming Playbill biography, Kimberly Belflower describes herself as "a playwright and educator originally from a small town in Appalachian Georgia," adding that John Proctor is the Villain is "her first ...
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Theatre in Review: Smash (Imperial Theatre)
In one of the many arguments that make up the book of Smash, someone defines a musical as "wherein a character sings when speaking can't possibly express the emotion they are experiencing, and people in the audience cheer." ...
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Theatre in Review: Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp. (Public Theater)
Caryl Churchill is showing a certain shrinkage these days, yet she remains as eerily buoyant as ever. The first quality can be found in this quartet of one-acts now at the Public; the first three are like tiny, spiked blunt ...
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Theatre in Review: minor*ity (Colt Coeur/WP Theater)
In minor*ity, playwright Francisca da silveira throws together a trio of Black artists at an international symposium, catching them in all sorts of personal and ethical entanglements. Key virtues of the debut work are ...
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Theatre in Review: Boop! (Broadhurst Theatre)
Boop! has nothing to offer an audience but a bunch of sly laughs, kicky tunes, dazzling staging, inventive design, a company of pros, and a star being born eight times a week. I'm afraid theatergoers will simply have to make ...
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Theatre in Review: The Swamp Dwellers (Theatre for a New Audience)
If nothing else, The Swamp Dwellers is one of the best-designed productions in town just now. Everyone talks about "immersive" theatre, which usually involves tearing up seats and installing multiple video screens, but the ...
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Theatre in Review: The Last Five Years (Hudson Theatre)
Rising novelist Jamie Wallerstein and aspiring musical theatre star Cathy Hiatt -- can their marriage be saved? Clearly, no. The Last Five Years begins with their breakup; it ends that way, too. In the time-bending ...
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Theatre in Review: A Mother (Baryshnikov Arts Center)
While I can't swear this is the first production to merge Bertolt Brecht with the disco anthem "Funkytown," I'd put good money on it. With A Mother, this is only the beginning. Think of it as a cooking show ...
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Theatre in Review: All the Beauty in the World (DR2 Theatre)
It's interesting (to me, anyway) how many notes I take at any given production. Some earn a few scribbles; others produce reams. This has nothing to do with quality, I think, but sometimes it can be revealing. For example, the 75-minute ...
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Theatre in Review: Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods (HERE)
The title tells almost all about Emma Horwitz and Bailey Williams' mad romp, which indeed frequently focuses on two sisters and is loaded with lesbian erotica -- not the steamy, noir-lit kind pioneered by Ann Bannon in the ...
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Theatre in Review: Glengarry Glen Ross (Palace Theatre)
On the day the stock market dove headfirst into a sea of red ink, there I was, at the Palace, surrounded by theatregoers who had spent upwards of several hundred dollars to see a savage critique of capitalism by a playwright who espouses ...
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Theatre in Review: Danger and Opportunity (East Village Basement)
The characters in Danger and Opportunity have a bad case of throuple trouble. Christian and Edwin are a married pair, hosting Margaret, Christian's girlfriend from his Catholic high school days. It's one of those nights, and ...
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Theatre in Review: Good Night, and Good Luck (Winter Garden Theatre)
Good Night, and Good Luck could hardly have arrived at a more propitious time: What with academic institutions, legal firms, and media outlets all bowing to power in Washington, what better time for the drama of a journalist ...
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Theatre in Review: The Cherry Orchard (Donmar Warehouse at St. Ann's Warehouse)
For a guy who's been dead for one hundred and twenty-one years, Anton Chekhov has had quite a few co-authors lately. These days, writers, not content with translating the Russian master's plays, are intent on dragging them into the ...
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Theatre in Review: Othello (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)
As far as I can tell, this much-anticipated revival's objective is to deliver a fast-paced Othello, cut to a relatively brief two hours and thirty minutes and heavily focused on stars Denzel Washington and Jake ...
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Theatre in Review: Buena Vista Social Club (Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre)
Buena Vista Social Club is packed to the rafters with sizzling musical performances, both vocal and instrumental, and dances to match. The opener, "El Carretero," strikes a party atmosphere, with the entire company leaning in ...
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