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  Theatre in Review: Sh*T. Meet. Fan. (MCC Theater)
In his latest effort, Robert O'Hara is out to shock -- the title might offer a hint about that - but, despite a predictable premise, it takes some time to figure out what kind of play this is. Clint Ramos' swanky set design - ...
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Theatre in Review: Music City (BEDLAM/West End Theatre)
For so many years, jukebox musicals have merely been a trial that must be borne, leaving one devoutly praying each season that this too might pass. I won't hear a word against Mamma Mia!, although its creators will surely face a ...
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Theatre in Review: Sex Variants of 1941: A Study of Homosexual Patterns (The Civilians/NYU Skirball)
The title of this new entertainment sounds like a Broadway revue series from the between-the-war years, say Earl Caroll Vanities or George White's Scandals. (One instinctively conjures images of Sex Variants of 1942 or ...
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Theatre in Review: Maybe Happy Ending (Belasco Theatre)
It tells you something about this theatre season that possibly the most touching relationship on a Broadway stage just now is between two machines. In Maybe Happy Ending, composers/librettists Will Aronson and Hue ...
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Theatre in Review: Burnout Paradise (St. Ann's Warehouse)
Uncharacteristically, I beg for your pity: There's no rational way to describe the barely controlled chaos of Burnout Paradise, which instantly takes the title of maddest entertainment in town. The five utterly committed, if ...
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Theatre in Review: Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now! (New World Stages)
The Hairspray ladies are receiving guests nightly at New World Stages, and if you have any affection for them or the show that launched their careers, you might want to drop into Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now! ...
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Theatre in Review: King Lear (The Shed)
This may be the most lucid and fast-moving King Lear you will ever see; this sounds like praise, and it is, up to a point. Thanks in part to the adoption of a Dolby Atmos system (a theatre first) by the sound designers Ben< ...
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Theatre in Review: Communion (the cell)
If you follow New York City's local news, you may be familiar with the case of Matthew LaBanca, who was fired from his positions as a music teacher in a Queens Catholic school and choir director at a nearby parish. It got plenty of ...
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Theatre in Review: A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical (Studio 54)
A Wonderful World opens with jazz great Louis Armstrong caught in a shaft of stark white light, his horn raised and ready to rip. It's a striking image, a carefully arranged bit of pop idolatry, and it tips us off that the ...
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Theatre in Review: Give Me Carmelita Tropicana (Soho Rep)
Give Me Carmelita Tropicana is both a farce and a requiem and if that sounds like a tall order, I suggest you drop in at Soho Rep's Walker Street venue and see for yourself. It will be your last opportunity to do so, as the ...
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Theatre in Review: The Devil's Disciple (Gingold Theatrical Group/Theatre Row)
David Staller, who directed this revival of George Bernard Shaw's comedy of the American Revolution, is also listed as the production's adaptor but, really, he is being too modest: He is all but the co-author of this version ...
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Theatre in Review: Walden (Second Stage/Tony Kiser Theatre)
The climate crisis has arrived -- witness this awful hurricane season, paired with balmy, seventy-eight-degree weather in New York this November week -- making it the topic of the moment in the New York theatre. It's an enormous issue, not ...
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Theatre in Review: We Live in Cairo (New York Theatre Workshop)
In a season so far starved for ambitious musical theatre, We Live in Cairo is a welcome blast of excitement and intelligence. It showcases The Lazours, the two brothers responsible for the book, music, and lyrics of ...
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Theatre in Review: The Christine Jorgensen Show (HERE)
At a time when transgender issues have become a hot topic on the left and a hot potato on the right, now is surely the time to recall Christine Jorgensen. Born George Jorgensen, an Army veteran, she was, in 1952, an early visitor to ...
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Theatre in Review: Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (Luna Stage/59E59)
For her new play, Jenny Lyn Bader has found a fascinating historical episode and I'm not sure she makes the most of it. The Mrs. Stern of the title would be Hannah Arendt, the philosopher, journalist, and thinker who gave us with ...
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Theatre in Review: In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot (Playwrights Horizons)
The playwright Sarah Mantell wants us to contemplate life after climate disaster -- something we should all be thinking about -- but, in the case of In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot, their imagination is ...
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Theatre in Review: Left on Tenth (James Earl Jones Theatre)
Left on Tenth, billed as a romantic comedy, only fulfills half that description; indeed, its greatest achievement may be to unite the audience in its hatred of Verizon's call-in service. Not just Verizon but any corporate ...
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Theatre in Review: Bad Kreyol (Signature Theatre)
It's hard to think of a playwright with a broader canvas than Dominique Morisseau. Whether exploring the history of Detroit in a three-play cycle, examining the struggles of unionized workers in Skeleton Crew, probing the ...
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Theatre in Review: Another Shot (Pershing Square Signature Center)
Another Shot, a comic drama about life in rehab, doesn't become engaging until it stops trying to entertain. Harry, the protagonist, hosts a Chicago sports radio program, using his gift of gab to convert his drinking problem ...
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Theatre in Review: Hothouse (Malaprop/Irish Arts Center)
Climb aboard the Crystal Prophecy, a luxury liner carrying its overprivileged clientele to the Arctic -- the former Arctic, really -- "to see where the ice isn't." (We are told it is sixty degrees Fahrenheit at the top of the world; you ...
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