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  Theatre in Review: War Words (NewYorkRep/New Light Theater Project at ART/New York Theatres)
We talk a lot about political divisions in the United States, but here's one that doesn't get nearly enough attention: "The number of Americans who serve in the Armed Forces is less than one percent of our entire population. There's no ...
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Theatre in Review: Scene Partners (Vineyard Theatre)
If you ever get lost in a mysterious, shifting reality, pray you have Dianne Wiest to see you through it. In John J. Caswell's slightly wobbly, but inventive, new play, she is Meryl Kowalski, a Midwestern widow of a ...
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Theatre in Review: Waiting for Godot (Theatre for a New Audience)
Sometimes you're at a play that seems as familiar as an old shoe when a line leaps out, causing you to see it through new eyes. This happened to me the other night at TFANA, where Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks are mining ...
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Theatre in Review: Arcadia (Bedlam/West End Theatre)
Bedlam's Arcadia is a rarity on two counts, being an Off-Off-Broadway revival of a Tom Stoppard play and a high-concept staging at that. It's a nervy move by the director Eric Tucker -- Stoppard's works aren't ...
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Theatre in Review: I Need That (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre)
If you want to experience the very definition of a star vehicle, Roundabout has a show for you. Before you bite, however, consider the star: It's unclear if Theresa Rebeck wrote I Need That for Danny DeVito or ...
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Theatre in Review: Ode to the Wasp Woman (Actors Temple Theatre)
It was like a sign from God: On the very day that I had recorded a TCM broadcast of the 1959 horror epic The Wasp Woman -- in an attempt at reviving the midnight movie thrills of my remote youth -- I received an announcement of ...
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Theatre in Review: Food (Brooklyn Academy of Music Fisher/Fishman Space)
I hope Geoff Sobelle has an unlimited supply of Tums. Partway through his new theatre piece, Food, he commits an apparent act of gluttony that has audience members laughing, whispering, and shaking their heads in ...
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Theatre in Review: I Hear You and Rejoice (Irish Arts Center)
I Hear You and Rejoice takes place at an Irish funeral, which is to say that laughter and grief compete for pride of place. The deceased is Kitsy Rainey, the title character in The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey, ...
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Theatre in Review: Merry Me (New York Theatre Workshop)
Merry is hardly the word for this entertainment; motley is more like it. Playwright Hansol Jung has thrown into her creative Vitamix a bizarre array of ingredients, blending elements of William Wycherly's The Country Wife, The ...
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Theatre in Review: Sabbath's Theater (The New Group)/It's That Time of the Month (Soho Rep)
This is Off Broadway's Vulva Week. That's a statement I never thought I'd make, but there you are. At the New Group, Sabbath's Theater opens with John Turturro and Elizabeth Marvel feigning sexual climax ...
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Theatre in Review: The Mysterious Case of Kitsy Rainey (Irish Arts Center)
As it happens, you can send messages to your loved ones from beyond the grave -- if you plan in advance. That's the modus operandi of the title character of this solo show, one of three being presented in repertory at the Irish Arts ...
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Theatre in Review: I Can Get It for You Wholesale (Classic Stage Company)
"You're the catcher or the pitcher!" So sings Harry Bogen, and he doesn't mean baseball. Harry, the antihero of this 1962 musical, is a human switchblade in a cheap suit, determined to knife his way to the top of New York's garment ...
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Theatre in Review: Stereophonic (Playwrights Horizons)
It's hard to overestimate the contribution that scenic designer David Zinn makes to the overall effect of Stereophonic. David Adjmi's play unfolds almost entirely in a Sausalito recording studio in 1976 and '77 ...
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Theatre in Review: King of the Jews (HERE Arts Center)
Can you make a deal with the devil and not get fatally rooked? Faced with overwhelming evil, can good people manage evil in the name of lessening it? Or must the effort end in bloodshed and horror? Tough questions all, they get a ...
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Theatre in Review: Arms and the Man (Gingold Theatrical Group/Theatre Row)
In the charming prologue to David Staller's production of George Bernard Shaw's classic comedy, we are warned that gunfire will be heard -- but more predominant is the sound of romantic ideals merrily being shattered to bits. ...
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Theatre in Review: Emergence (Pershing Square Signature Center)
"Things are not as they seem," says Patrick Olson, the guiding spirit of this oddball hybrid of lecture and concert performance, and I'm certainly not going to argue with him. Indeed, he makes this statement repeatedly in Eme ...
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Theatre in Review: Redwood (Ensemble Studio Theatre)
Say hello to Brittany K. Allen, a double threat you'll want to know better. She stars in Redwood which she also wrote, but this is no mere vehicle; she surrounds herself with a gallery of sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued ...
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Theatre in Review: Chasing Happy (Pulse Theatre/Theatre Row)
Nick, a middle-aged architect living in Provincetown, is a mess, and not just because he's the central character of Michel Wallerstein's wayward, enervated comedy. He has just enjoyed the sex of his dreams with Brad, a well-toned ...
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Theatre in Review: Partnership (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)
If George Bernard Shaw was interested in the New Woman, Elizabeth Baker specialized in the Businesswoman. The long-obscure playwright, whose career ran roughly parallel to Shaw's heyday, specialized in middle-class studies that ...
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Theatre in Review: Gutenberg! The Musical! (James Earl Jones Theatre)
The only thing wrong with Gutenberg! The Musical! is, as it happens, Gutenberg! The Musical! This isn't as sweeping a statement as it looks, but it points to the problem at the heart of a brash entertainment that ...
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