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  Theatre in Review: Contact High (Theatre 511)
It is high time for musical theatre to graduate from high school; the creators of such shows have developed an unhealthy obsession with social pressures, sexual identity, popularity (or the lack of it), and all the other challenges facing ...
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Theatre in Review: Make Believe (Second Stage Theater/Tony Kiser Theater)
Make Believe is populated with children who play some very adult games; the playwright, Bess Wohl, is a pretty audacious game-player herself. Only someone with nerves of steel would put a quartet of young characters, played ...
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Theatre in Review: Sea Wall/A Life (Hudson Theatre)
As delicate as Meissen china yet hard as bedrock are these two solo pieces, each of which offers vexing truths about the fragility of existence, the caprices of fortune, and the sheer mystery of why we are alive. They also showcase two ...
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Theatre in Review: The Exes (Theatre Row)
Lenore Skomal's new play is dedicated to the idea that divorce makes a family, and multiple divorces only further strengthen the ties that bind. Chief among the exes in The Exes are Dick and Richard, men of a certain age ...
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Theatre in Review: OSCAR at The Crown (3 Dollar Bill)
What is it with playwrights and the apocalyptic future? Isn't the apocalyptic present difficult enough? Whatever the reason, the world and his brother seem intent on dragging us into some terrible day after tomorrow when the economy is ...
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Theatre in Review: Midsummer: A Banquet (Food of Love Productions/Third Rail Projects)
If, like me, you grew up thinking of dinner theatre as rattletrap revivals of Any Wednesday paired with steamship round of beef, you may be pleasantly surprised by the activities at Café Fae, a former clothing store located a block ...
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Theatre in Review: Bat Out of Hell (City Center)
Bat Out of Hell once again raises the most vexing question about jukebox musicals: Why do they exist? I'm not talking about the biographical shows, like Jersey Boys, Beautiful, and Ain't Too Proud, which often have ...
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Theatre in Review: Love Noël: The Songs and Letters of Noël Coward (Irish Repertory Theatre)
For a cool, refreshing sip of gin and tonic on a hot summer night, I commend to you this tribute to one of the twentieth century's greatest entertainers. Noël Coward did a great many things well; this piece, somewhat unusually, celebrates ...
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Theatre in Review: Rinse, Repeat (Pershing Square Signature Center)
A difficult subject, of the sort that requires the most sensitive handling, gets surprisingly lively dramatic treatment by a first-time playwright in Rinse, Repeat. In real life, Domenica Feraud has shared some of the ...
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Theatre in Review: Coriolanus (Delacorte Theatre)/Measure for Measure (The Duke on 42nd Street)
This week sees major productions of two of William Shakespeare's problem plays; in each case, the director tackles the work's imperfections head-on, with differing degrees of success. For New York Shakespeare Festival, Daniel ...
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Theatre in Review: Moulin Rouge! (Al Hirschfeld Theatre)
It was a strange experience to see Moulin Rouge! on the day of Hal Prince's passing. As the world knows, Prince and his collaborators turned the Broadway musical upside down, teaching it to investigate morals, manners, ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts Series B (Throughline Artists/59E59)
The conclusion of war brings neither happiness nor peace in Lucky, Sharr White's tense and mysterious two-hander, which kicks off Series B of this festival of one-acts on a strong, satisfying note. World War II is ...
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Theatre in Review: Little Gem (Irish Repertory Theatre)
The gift of gab reigns supreme in this beguiling triptych of contemporary Irish womanhood dealing with the sheer bloody business of living. In a series of intertwined monologues, Kay, Lorraine, and Amber -- residents of Dublin and each ...
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Theatre in Review: Summer Shorts, Series A (Throughline Artists/59E59)
It's not often that one encounters a play with the unsettlingly weird vibe of Courtney Baron's Here I Lie. It consists of intertwined monologues by a pair of characters who are startlingly candid about their flagrant ...
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Theatre in Review: A White Man's Guide to Riker's Island (Producers' Club)
Richard L. Roy spent most his early years informed by great expectations. "I grew up with the knowledge that if I worked hard enough, I could be that I ever wanted to be," we are told early on in A White Man's Guide to Riker's ...
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Theatre in Review: the way she spoke (Minetta Lane Theatre)
Isaac Gomez's new work is an honest and honorable attempt at tackling an appalling, long-running injustice; that it is a losing battle says much about the difficulty of the material, which may be immune to dramatic treatment, at ...
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Theatre in Review: The Rolling Stone (Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse)
The contemporary drama bookshelf is positively groaning with coming-out dramas, but in very few, if any, are the stakes as high as in The Rolling Stone. Chris Urch's play is set in Uganda, where homosexual acts or, as ...
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Theatre in Review: Broadway Bounty Hunter (Barrow Street Theater)
If anyone on Broadway is capable of bounty hunting, it's Annie Golden: No other musical theatre performer is better equipped to track down her quarry and bring 'em back alive. Still going strong after lo these many years -- her ...
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Theatre in Review: Jacqueline Novak: Get on Your Knees (Cherry Lane Theatre)
"Okay, that was hell." These are the words with which Jacqueline Novak greets her audience at the Cherry Lane. It's nothing against them, of course. "I hate a confident entrance," she adds. "I find it crass." It's just the sort of ...
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Theatre in Review: I Spy a Spy (Theatre at St. Clement's)
I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but you're never going to convince me that I Spy a Spy isn't the fruit of a plot by Julian Assange and Russian hackers (assisted, maybe, by Kim Jong Un), aimed at undermining America's ...
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