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  Theatre in Review: Prima Facie (Golden Theatre)
Prima Facie is an impassioned closing argument disguised as a play. It directly addresses the festering social issue of violence against women in a way that is guaranteed to bring spectators to their feet. And it features a ...
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Theatre in Review: Good Night, Oscar (Belasco Theatre)
Oscar Levant may have been one of show business' greatest schlubs -- at the Belasco, his own wife calls him "Eeyore in a cheap suit" -- but Goodnight, Oscar is as sleekly tailored a vehicle as any actor could wish. That would ...
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Theatre in Review: God of Carnage (Theatre Breaking Through Barriers/Theatre Row)
"It's just bile! It's nothing!" So says one of the characters in God of Carnage, having thrown up all over an expensive sofa and coffee table. She should talk: Yasmina Reza's bleak comedy is all bile, all the time. ...
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Theatre in Review: The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Red Bull Theater/Fiasco Theater)
In the most delightful moment of the new production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre -- indeed, on any stage in New York just now -- the cast assembles, complete with guitar and ukelele, for an effervescent rendition of Cole Porter's "Let's ...
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Theatre in Review: The Thanksgiving Play (Second Stage/The Hayes Theater)
Satire often has a short shelf life, especially when the subject is topical. In 2018, The Thanksgiving Play was a merry and thoroughly up-to-the-minute spoof of wokeness as it was beginning to enter the cultural conversation. ...
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Theatre in Review: Peter Pan Goes Wrong (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)
Attention, fans of The Play That Goes Wrong: Peter Pan Goes Wrong has opened at the Barrymore, where it is scheduled to run through July. There; my work is done.
For the uninitiated: The Play That Goes Wrong, ...
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Theatre in Review: White Girl in Danger (Vineyard Theatre/Second Stage Theater)
If you've ever questioned the importance of good sound design in theatre, White Girl in Danger will provide the definitive answer. Michael R. Jackson's new work is an ultra-high-concept musical set inside the fictional ...
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Theatre in Review: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Lunt-Fontanne Theatre)
Since its 1979 debut, we've had revivals of Sweeney Todd six ways from Sunday: in-the-round, with actors doubling as musicians, and the drastically scaled-down pie-shop version, complete with dinner. All had their points, but ...
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Theatre in Review: Plays for the Plague Year (Public Theater/Joe's Pub)
Full confession: I attended Plays for the Plague Year with a sinking heart, convinced that I needed to see a show about life under COVID lockdown like I needed a hole in my head. But never underestimate Suzan-Lori Parks ...
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Theatre in Review: Camelot (Lincoln Center Theater/Vivian Beaumont Theater)
As Aaron Sorkin keeps telling anyone who will listen, his revised book takes the magic out of Camelot. How right he is: How else to account for the cloud of melancholy parked over the Beaumont stage? Why is the ...
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Theatre in Review: Fat Ham (American Airlines Theatre)
Following its extended run at the Public Theater last summer, Fat Ham comes to Broadway accessorized with the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. An unabashed crowd pleaser packed with plenty of lowdown laughs, it relocates the ...
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Theatre in Review: Shucked (Nederlander Theatre)
The you-know-what is as high as an elephant's eye in Shucked, a gleeful pileup of cornpone gags and countrified melodies dedicated to the proposition that weary Broadway audiences desperately need an uncomplicated good time. ...
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Theatre in Review: Eleanor and Alice (Urban Stages)
There very well may be an engaging drama in the decades-long relationship of Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Indeed, they made for perfect frenemies: saintly, self-doubting Eleanor, dedicated to uplifting the downtrodden ...
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Theatre in Review: Regretfully, So the Birds Are (Playwrights Horizons/WP Theater)
A gaggle of contemporary tropes -- identity politics, white-savior syndrome, and the ever-popular dysfunctional family -- gets taken for a ride in this wild tour of life in the jittery, mixed-up twenty-first century. Playwright Julia ...
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Theatre in Review: Smart (Ensemble Studio Theatre)
Smart was commissioned by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as part of its program to encourage plays with scientific subjects. In this case, the investment yields a dubious plot device designed to link a pair of wandering plot ...
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Theatre in Review: Life of Pi (Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre)
Whatever you may think of Life of Pi, you cannot deny that Max Webster's production is wildly eventful, thanks to a battery of transporting visual and audio effects. The narrative unfolds with cinematic fluidity, ...
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Theatre in Review: Bob Fosse's Dancin' (Music Box Theatre)
Dancin', a blockbuster hit in 1978, was the chef d'oeuvre of Bob Fosse, choreographer, director, and control freak extraordinaire; one wonders what he might make of the current revival, which adds his name to the title ...
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Theatre in Review: Bad Cinderella (Imperial Theatre)
The title of the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is a misnomer; its heroine hardly rises to the status of "bad." Annoying? Sure. Mixed-up? You betcha. Then again, the show in which she dwells is like a hormonally confused teenager, ...
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Theatre in Review: Drinking in America (Audible Theater at Minetta Lane Theatre)
Drinking in America is less a play than a male bestiary, an acute study of the species known as homo horribilis in its reckless mid-1980s heyday. Written by Eric Bogosian as a vehicle for himself before he ...
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Theatre in Review: Lunch Bunch (The Play Company/Clubbed Thumb at 122CC)
Lunch Bunch is a workplace comedy with a twist, a culinary entertainment served with piquant hints of frustration and sadness. Playwright Sarah Einspanier posits a quintet of cubicle dwellers who make up the collective ...
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