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  Theatre in Review: Brooklyn Laundry (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)
In Brooklyn Laundry, John Patrick Shanley preaches the necessity of casting aside one's starry-eyed illusions and embracing the true satisfaction of love in the real world; to argue this proposition, he gins up the ...
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Theatre in Review: Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotskyist (The Tank)
Three Rounds in the Life of a Trotskyist would be a more apt title: Andy Boyd's verbally two-fisted drama cannily traces the career arc of a prominent neoconservative like Irving Kristol, explaining how a fiery young Marxist ...
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Theatre in Review: Remember This Trick (Target Margin Theater)
I often think each theatre season has a theme of its own, offering proof that artists always have their ears to the ground, sussing out what's going on underneath the surface of daily life. Still, nothing could prepare for the ...
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Theatre in Review: Pericles (Fiasco Theater at Classic Stage Company)
Pericles (aka Pericles, Prince of Tyre) is probably the ideal script for Fiasco Theater, a company known for a highly presentational, we're-putting-on-a-show quality that many audiences find irresistible. Songs, ...
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Theatre in Review: The Ally (Public Theater)
The unthinkable has happened: We have a playwright who can out-argue Joshua Harmon. The latter, the indefatigable author of Bad Jews, Admissions, and the currently running Prayer for the French Republic, is a master ...
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Theatre in Review: The Hunt (Almeida Theatre at St. Ann's Warehouse)
This extraordinary psychological thriller begins with a quiet exchange between a schoolteacher and one of his students; as one watches it, it's hard to imagine the fallout to come. The Hunt aims at the nerve center of a ...
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Theatre in Review: The Seven Year Disappear (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Center)
Given the popularity of the characters she plays in the series And Just Like That... and The Gilded Age, it's easy to forget Cynthia Nixon's astonishing versatility. Only a few seasons ago, she confidently shuttled ...
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Theatre in Review: Oh, Mary! (Lucille Lortel Theatre)
If you're looking for an evening of riotous running around, you can't do better than Oh, Mary!, a bawdy, brazenly queer rewrite of American history that turns the Lincoln-era White House into a hotbed of forbidden passions. ...
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Theatre in Review: A Sign of the Times (York Theatre Company at New World Stages)
Ah, nostalgia: A Sign of the Times is set in the 1960s, a time when musicals were expected to have original books and scores. What days they were: Songs crafted to suit the characters, lyrics that advanced the plot. I get ...
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Theatre in Review: Sunset Baby (Signature Theatre)
This is the season of the comeback play, in which also-rans from previous seasons return, displaying renewed strength and relevance. The current Broadway production of Appropriate is light years ahead of its 2014 premiere, for ...
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Theatre in Review: The Apiary (Second Stage/Tony Kiser Theatre)
In The Apiary, the state of the climate is disastrously fragile, almost as much as playwright Kate Douglas' knack for dramatic construction; as it conclusively demonstrates, a provocative premise can take a writer ...
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Theatre in Review: I Love You So Much I Could Die (New York Theatre Workshop)
I Love You So Much I Could Die is an avant-garde work in reverse; instead of breaking new ground for more eloquent expression, writer/performer Mona Pirnot, aided by director Lucas Hnath, wraps herself in so ...
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Theatre in Review: Spiritus/Virgil's Dance (Rattlestick Theater)
Spiritus/Virgil's Dance finds writer-performer Dael Orlandersmith in a minor key, so much so that I wonder if theatre is the right format for it. In pieces like Until the Flood, Forever, and Horsedreams ...
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Theatre in Review: On Set with Theda Bara (Transport Group/Lucille Lortel Theatre at The Brick)
I don't know, of course, but I have long suspected that David Greenspan is a practitioner of The Delsarte System of Expression, and, having seen On Set with Theda Bara, I am now convinced of it. François Delsarte, as ...
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Theatre in Review: Between Two Knees (Perelman Performing Arts Center)
Between Two Knees introduces us to The 1491s, a self-described "intertribal indigenous sketch comedy troupe," whose work has been disseminated on TV, radio, and online. The show at the Perelman highlights the company' ...
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Theatre in Review: Munich Medea: Happy Family (PlayCo/WP Theater)
We've all encountered stories of sexual abuse, both in fact and fiction, but few are as bizarre or disturbing as the triangle that makes up Munich Medea: Happy Family. In her first effort, the playwright Corinne Jaber ...
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Theatre in Review: you don't have to do anything (HERE Arts Center)
"I forget a lot," says Teddy, the protagonist of you don't have to do anything. "I have a terrible short-term memory." Well, maybe, but in truth that comment is the first move in an elaborate game of Who Do You Trust? On ...
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Theatre in Review: Russian Troll Farm (Vineyard Theatre)
In Russian Troll Farm, Christine Lahti is the kind of boss guaranteed to make any HR manager spontaneously combust. Whippet-thin in a series of tailored pantsuits, her cascading hair like bird wings at rest, she rules her ...
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Theatre in Review: The Connector (MCC)
A slow season for musicals -- so far, that is; hold on for the spring onslaught -- gets a jolt with this tart tale of journalistic scandal, unfolding in the sunset of magazine publishing's golden era. The Connector isn't ...
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Theatre In Review: Jonah (Roundabout Theatre at Laura Pels Theatre)
In the program for her new play, Rachel Bonds notes that its time frame is "the past and the present. But everything is slippery." That's putting it mildly. Among the many questions you're likely to be asking yourself at the Laura ...
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