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Theatre in Review: Redwood (Nederlander Theatre)

Broadway gets its Cinerama moment with Redwood, thanks to its remarkably immersive scenic and video design. Jason Ardizzone-West wraps the action in a forest of screens that extends beyond one's angle of vision, ...

Theatre in Review: Safe House (Abbey Theatre/St. Ann's Warehouse)

In the theatre, time can be divided into nanoseconds, each crucial to a play's success; if it overstays its welcome, the result can be unintended agony. Such thoughts occupied me when checking out the new attraction, presented in ...

Theatre in Review: Garside's Career (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)

Jonathan Bank, artistic director of the Mint -- or, as I like to think of him, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Plays -- has stated innumerable times that he doesn't dig up forgotten works just for the archaeological sport of it. Indeed, ...

Theatre in Review: Liberation (Roundabout Theatre Company)

Liberation asks the question: From where we started, how did we end up where we are today? For playwright Bess Wohl, the starting point is circa 1970, when a young woman named Lizzie starts a women's rap group in her ...

Theatre in Review: My First Ex-Husband (MMAC Theatre)

This is the season of Ring Binder Theatre, with rotating casts reading from scripts rather than learning lines and blocking. It's an easy way of getting big-name actors to make short-term commitments, bringing in fresh cadres of fans every ...

Theatre in Review: How Is It That We Live or Shakey Jake + Alice (The Tent/ART New York Theatres)

How Is It That We Live... (full title above) is a play at odds with itself. It is ostensibly about the lifelong relationship of the title characters. But the playwright, Len Jenkin, has trouble keeping his mind on that ...

Theatre in Review: Henry IV (Theatre for a New Audience)

In William Shakespeare's history cycle, it's never good to be king; one is surrounded by scheming factions, domestic problems fester in the background, and war is an ever-present threat. The title character of the two-part Henr ...

Theatre in Review: The Antiquities (Playwrights Horizons/Vineyard Theatre/Goodman Theatre)

The Antiquities is an exhibition disguised as a play and Jordan Harrison, its author, is our docent, showing us the last few remaining scraps of a lost civilization. That would be humanity as we know it, which, in the ...

Theatre in Review: Beckett Briefs (Irish Repertory Theatre)

Samuel Beckett's career consisted of one long distillation. His breakthrough piece, Waiting for Godot, typically runs two and a half hours; his penultimate work, Catastrophe, clocks in at six minutes. This several ...

Theatre in Review: A Knock on the Roof (New York Theatre Workshop)

The title of Khawla Ibraheem's play refers to a specific tactic used by the Israeli Army in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As Mariam, the protagonist, notes, "It's a small bomb they drop to alert us that we have five to ...

Theatre in Review: English (Roundabout Theatre Company/Todd Haimes Theatre)

Language is a bridge and a barrier in English, Sanaz Toossi's melancholy comedy making its Broadway debut following its initial engagement at Atlantic Theater Company in 2022. It's an outlier among Pulitzer Prize ...

Theatre in Review: Kowalski (The Duke on 42nd Street)

Kowalski is about the unkindness of strangers, in this case, Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando, whose original meet-up, at least in this telling, was mighty unseemly. On a summer night in 1947, Brando drops into Williams' ...

Theatre in Review: Peregrinations (Dutch Kills Theatre/Long Story Short at The Tank)

The members of Long Story Short, a self-termed "devising ensemble," couldn't have picked a more apt time for Peregrinations, which examines the five-alarm emergency that immigration has become in this country. According to ...

Theatre in Review: Cymbeline (NAATCO/Lynn F. Angelson Theatre)

Oddly, Stephen Brown-Fried's staging of William Shakespeare's nuttiest play is at its best when soft goods are involved. Very early on, members of the company remove large swaths of fabric from the elaborate iron bed at ...

Theatre in Review: Dear Jack, Dear Louise (Penguin Rep Theatr and Shadowland Stages at 59E59)

I've always thought of Ken Ludwig as the theatre's chief carpenter, a solid constructionist of farces like Lend Me a Tenor, and musicals like Crazy for You. (I'm not being patronizing; you try building an airy, ...

Theatre in Review: Radio Downtown: Radical '70s Artists Live on Air (The Civilians/59E59)

"Where would we be without Marcel Duchamp, huh, and his ready-mades?" How often have I thought that? Haven't we all? All right, none of us have, but it is exactly the kind of kooky, yet arresting, statement that makes up the text of R ...

Theatre in Review: Show/Boat: A River (Target Margin Theatre/Skirball Center)

The Cotton Blossom has been put into dry dock, stripped of its appurtenances, and its motor subjected to an examination. That's the approach taken in Show/Boat: A River, which probes the landmark musical for...what? Take it ...

Theatre in Review: Old Cock (mala voadora/59E59)

I can hear you smirking at the title; indeed, the production begins with a recorded announcement welcoming us to Robert Schenkkan's Old Cock, followed by a pause for a laugh. To be clear, however, this is a work of ...

Theatre in Review: The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [redux] (Fourth Street Theatre)

The only thing better than one Joshua William Gelb is two of him. Or three. Or four. Or...well, I finally lost count during this giddy adaptation of a Stanislaw Lem story, which blends live performance and video to hilarious effect. ...

Theatre in Review: Gypsy (Majestic Theatre)

Madam Rose once again seizes the stage, in what seems to be a once-every-decade-or-so ritual. The role has become an irresistible challenge for top musical-theatre leading ladies, even if the out-of-left-field choices (Angela Lansbury, ...