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  Theatre in Review: That Parenting Musical (Theatre Row)
We already have enough trouble with the falling birth rate; do we need That Parenting Musical, too? Graham and Kristina Fuller, a pair of Off-Broadway first-timers, have assembled a revue that portrays the ...
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Theatre in Review: The Voices in Your Head (Egg and Spoon Theatre Collective/St. Lydia's)
You know all about immersive theatre; the people behind The Voices in Your Head are taking a step further, aiming for a kind of theatre of communion. It's not for nothing that Grier Mathiot and Billy McEntee's ...
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Theatre in Review: Counting and Cracking (Belvoir St. Theatre/Public Theater/NYU Skirball Center)
Counting and Cracking is the most ambitious first play I've seen since...well, maybe ever. It's as if a tyro David Lean picked up a camera and decided to shoot The Bridge on the River Kwai or a novice Tom Stoppard ...
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Theatre in Review: The Ask (The Wild Project)
State-of-the-nation plays tend to be sprawling affairs, teeming with characters and ideas. In The Ask, however, Matthew Freeman delivers the compact version, a polite, two-person, set-to, staged over coffee, about a ...
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Theatre in Review: Table 17 (MCC Theater)
Romantic comedy is an endangered theatrical genre but playwright Douglas Lyons knows its secret: Comedy is the least of it. To be sure, Table 17 is loaded with humor, especially when a certified comic demon named Mic ...
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Theatre in Review: Lifeline (Pershing Square Signature Center)
The program and signage for Lifeline call it "the Scottish sell-out musical," but I'm sure they don't mean it like it sounds; indeed, given its staunchly crusading spirit, it is the opposite of a frank commercial venture. ...
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Theatre in Review: Hurricane Season (Vernal & Sere Theatre at Theatre Row)
Some plays conclude without the audience realizing it, leading to awkward curtain calls. This is true of Hurricane Season, but it also leaves one unclear about when the intermission begins. During a pause at the performance I ...
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Theatre in Review: Once Upon a Mattress (Hudson Theatre)
Once Upon a Mattress has landed on Broadway at just the right time -- you could even say in the nick of time. After a spring season of earnest, clenched-jaw musicals populated with juvenile delinquents, tormented artists, ...
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Theatre in Review: Job (Hayes Theatre)
Job wastes no time in getting down to the threat of mayhem: The lights come upon a therapist, in his office, held at gunpoint by a young woman. As images go, it's a natural for The New Yorker's cartoon caption contest. ...
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Theatre in Review: The Meeting: The Interpreter (Theatre at St. Clement's)
The Meeting: The Interpreter begins with a full set of film-style credits delivered on a screen that blocks our view of the stage. Well, we can't say we weren't warned. The screen, which, eventually, shuffles to the far left, ...
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Theatre in Review: Cellino v. Barnes (Asylum NYC)
Memo to the creators of Cellino v. Barnes: The jingle is all you ever needed.
Mike B. Breen and David Rafailedes have drawn up a satirical history of the New York law firm known for high-camp commercials ...
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Theatre in Review: someone spectacular (Pershing Square Signature Center)
One inconsolable person is a tragedy; six make a comedy pilot. That's the takeaway from someone spectacular, which consistently mines humor, sometimes to its detriment, from some of life's most appalling sorrows. Playwright
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Theatre in Review: The Sabbath Girl (Penguin Rep Theatre at 59E59)
Because musicals so often water down their source materials, it's pleasant to report on a show that does the opposite. With The Sabbath Girl, music, it seems, was the missing ingredient: In 2020, Penguin Rep staged Cary ...
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Theatre in Review: From Here (Renaissance Theatre Company/Pershing Square Signature Center
Nobody exploits like the sincere. I'm referring to artists who, ready or not, want so much to move an audience, to convince it of the rightness of their causes. They put themselves out there, as vulnerable as all get-out, advocating ...
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Theatre in Review: Inspired by True Events (Out of the Box Theatrics/Theatre 154)
At Theatre 154, we are taken into a green room; little do we know it's a trap. Scenic designer Lindsay G. Fuori has reworked the backstage actors' hangout at the former New Ohio Theatre, accommodating 35 audience members; we're ...
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Theatre in Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Classical Theatre of Harlem/Richard Rodgers Amphitheatre)
The music emanating from Marcus Garvey Park these nights is sweet and hot, if not necessarily Shakespearean. The troublemaking Puck, parting a sumptuous blue show curtain and eyeballing the audience, steps out and launches into "Fascinatin' ...
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Theatre in Review: Ain't Done Bad (Pershing Square Signature Center)
Are we witnessing the birth of a new musical theatre sub-genre? Suddenly, the narrative dance piece is making a bid for recognition. First, Illinoise, choreographed by Justin Peck to a scenario by Jackie Sibblies Drury and set to ...
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Theatre in Review: Empire (New World Stages)
Empire, a musical about the problems of building a certain skyscraper at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, could use an architectural review. Its book rests on a shaky foundation, is shoddily constructed, and relies on ...
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Theatre in Review: N/A (Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre)
How to describe Holland Taylor's lazy, yet lethal, way with a line? Like a tennis pro casually lobbing balls over the net? A cat, languidly batting around a toy? A renowned slugger upending the status quo on the diamond with an ...
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Theatre in Review: Isabel (NAATCO at Abrons Art Center)
In Isabel, you can't see the forest for the staircases. If that seems like an odd comment, you have no idea what awaits you at the Abrons Art Center. reid tang's cryptic family tale is so overloaded with bizarre ...
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