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  Theatre in Review: Deep History (Public Theater/Susan Stein Shiva Theater)
Deep History begins as a lecture and threatens to become a nervous breakdown. David Finnigan, a self-described "artist who works with researchers" and "a consultant with the World Bank on climate and disaster risk" is ...
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Theatre in Review: People of the Book (Urban Stages)
Plenty is going on in People of the Book -- sex, politics, racism, literary chicanery, and a full dossier of scandalous secrets -- but it rarely seems to matter, for two reasons. First, the plot is wildly overstuffed, its ...
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Theatre in Review: The Roommate (Booth Theatre)
I've never seen this before: The Roommate begins with a curtain call. Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone, the entire cast of Jen Silverman's prairie comedy, enter, their names projected on Bob Crowley's airy ...
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Theatre in Review: McNeal (Lincoln Center Theatre/Vivian Beaumont Theater)
"Everything is copy," the screenwriter Phoebe Ephron reportedly advised her daughter, Nora -- words taken to heart by Jacob McNeal, a respected novelist whose personal ledger is wildly out of balance. On the plus side, he occupies a ...
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Theatre in Review: Dirty Laundry (WP Theater)
In Dirty Laundry, Constance Shulman plays the most practical adulteress you've ever met. Referred to in the script as Another Woman, she is, more accurately, The Other Woman, and she provides much more than the usual ...
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Theatre in Review: The Hills of California (Broadhurst Theatre)
The Hills of California, which arrived riding a wave of critical praise, confirms that big ensemble dramas are back. Last season saw such big, rangy dramas as Appropriate and Stereophonic play to acclaim and ...
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Theatre in Review: Yellow Face (Roundabout Theatre Company/Todd Haimes Theatre)
It's one of the oddest comebacks I can remember: When David Henry Hwang premiered Yellow Face at the Public Theatre in 2008, directed by Leigh Silverman, it felt scattered, unsure of itself, tangled in the ...
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Theatre in Review: Good Bones (Public Theater)
Like the house where it takes place, Good Bones has plenty of curb appeal, but it's also a little bit unfinished. It looks good and is filled with attractive, talented people but its drama arrives surprisingly late in the ...
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Theatre in Review: Fatherland (City Center Stage II)
Our current state of American madness is made frighteningly explicit in this verbatim play, taken from court testimonies, public statements, and at least one recorded conversation. The characters are not named but this is the story of the ...
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Theatre in Review: Medea Re-Versed (Red Bull Theater and Bedlam at The Sheen Center)
The play is titled Medea Re-Versed but the evening is stolen by the Messenger, the supporting character who brings the dire news of murder most foul. The production's chief utility player, the great Jacob Ming-Trent, ...
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Theatre in Review: The Beacon (Irish Repertory Theatre)
Beiv, the central character of The Beacon -- "heroine" doesn't seem quite right, given the suspicions under which she labors -- is a remarkably candid woman who, nevertheless, guards a houseful of secrets. An artist ...
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Theatre in Review: See What I Wanna See (Out of the Box Theatricals)
See What I Wanna See lives so thoroughly in its head that it never lets the audience in. This ultra-high-concept musical by Michael John LaChiusa offers a pair of one-acts (each with a distinctly odd prologue) designed ...
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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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