All stories by Jesse Green on BroadwayStars

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

The Public Theater's King Lear, Starring John Lithgow, Is Commendable But Vague by Jesse Green

On a recent evening at the Delacorte in Central Park, a raccoon stopped by unticketed to watch a moment of the Public Theater's new production of King Lear, starring John Lithgow. Following …

SOURCE: Vulture at 10:30PM[SHARE]
Friday, August 1, 2014

Theater Review: Between Riverside and Crazy Lies Exellence by Jesse Green

Even on the rare occasions when they're legible, the notes I take in the theater are generally useless " except in those cases where boredom causes them to mutate into to-do lists. I make no…

SOURCE: Vulture at 01:05PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Theater Review: Sex With Strangers Has a Sitcom Touch, But a Good One by Jesse Green

If you were trying to devise a light comedy for overheated August audiences (and theaters closing out their subscription seasons) you might do worse than a two-hander with a clickbait title …

SOURCE: Vulture at 09:00PM[SHARE]
Monday, July 21, 2014

Theater Review: Piece of My Heart Really Needed Some Brains by Jesse Green

Jersey Boys, which should have been a cautionary tale, has become instead a how-to guide. (Half a billion in Broadway receipts will do that.) It has not only spawned an infestation of jukebo…

SOURCE: Vulture at 10:00PM[SHARE]
Thursday, July 17, 2014

The Lady in Room 309: How Elaine Stritch Understood New Yorkers Who Secretly Feel Like Frauds by Jesse Green

Elaine Stritch wasn't the star of Company, but she sure as hell made herself the star of its making-of documentary. Dean Jones and the rest of the actors be damned; the drama of her failure …

SOURCE: Vulture at 07:32PM[SHARE]

Theater Review: The Cornpone Charms of Pump Boys and Dinettes Are Almost Enough by Jesse Green

Can friendliness be baked into a song, the way peaches are in a pie? On the evidence of Pump Boys and Dinettes, the final presentation of the Encores! Off-Center series this summer, the answ…

SOURCE: Vulture at 05:00PM[SHARE]
Sunday, July 13, 2014

James Franco's The Long Shrift Never Seems to End; Atomic Ends Just the Way You'd Think, Only Worse by Jesse Green

For all the glibness of his image-crafting, James Franco appears to be sincere in his regard for actual artistic production. And I say this not just in hopes of avoiding the title of Li…

SOURCE: Vulture at 09:11PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Theater Review: A Devil You Do Know, in Randy Newman's Faust by Jesse Green

"It's not the length," a friend said after seeing Randy Newman's Faust last night, "it's the Goethe." Indeed, the Encores! Off-Center concert of the 1995 musical was plenty swift, its book (…

SOURCE: Vulture at 12:45PM[SHARE]

A Visit to the Real-Life Glee: The Jimmy Awards by Jesse Green

The Shrek with braces was adorable. Actually, so were the other two Shreks. All three had played the chartreuse ogre in high-school productions of the 2008 musical: one at Calvary Chapel Chr…

SOURCE: Vulture at 08:30AM[SHARE]
Thursday, June 26, 2014

Theater Review: Jonathan Larson Before He Blew Up Big, on View in tick, tick ... BOOM! by Jesse Green

The plight of promising young artists is a subject that's infinitely fascinating to promising young artists. If they fulfill that promise, the rest of us may retrospectively find the plight …

SOURCE: Vulture at 09:04PM[SHARE]
Friday, June 20, 2014

Shakespeare's Bloody Problem: Why the Tragedies Almost Never Work Anymore by Jesse Green

One character, his torso already relieved of arms and legs, is tossed onto the barbecue. Another's hands and tongue are severed to keep her from reporting a crime. (She's then stabbed to dea…

SOURCE: Vulture at 08:00AM[SHARE]
Thursday, June 19, 2014

Theater Review: Flashes of Brilliance, Hamstrung by Cliché, in the Tupac Musical Holler If Ya Hear Me by Jesse Green

As opening lines of musicals go, it's a long road from "There's a bright golden haze on the meadow" to "They got a nigga / Shedding tears, reminiscing on my past fears / Cause shit was hecti…

SOURCE: Vulture at 10:35PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Theater Review: The Ticks and the Tocks of The Who & the What by Jesse Green

Every playwriting student sooner or later learns Chekhov's dictum: A gun introduced in the first half of a play must be discharged in the second. Usually the gun is literal, but Ayad Akhtar,…

SOURCE: Vulture at 08:15AM[SHARE]
Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Theater Review: Greta Gerwig Tries to Keep The Village Bike on the Road by Jesse Green

It's no spoiler to report that the final stage direction of Penelope Skinner's play The Village Bike, brought over from London by MCC Theater and starring Greta Gerwig, is "Mike wanks." The …

SOURCE: Vulture at 10:00PM[SHARE]
Monday, June 9, 2014

This Year's Tonys Were Decent Broadway, Dull TV by Jesse Green

Last night's Tony Awards presentation capped off, or at least put to rest, the 2013-2014 Broadway season, which featured very strong if not record ticket-sales of about $1.27 billion. Yay, m…

SOURCE: Vulture at 12:20PM[SHARE]
Friday, June 6, 2014

What Should Win at the Tonys Sunday Night, and What Will Win? by Jesse Green

By 6 p.m. tonight, the 800-some Tony voters who want to be counted must get their ballots to the accountants' office. I'll have just made the deadline with mine; even though most of the 26 c…

SOURCE: Vulture at 03:30PM[SHARE]

Theater Review: Just About Everything Works (Except the Seats) in Kenneth Branagh's Macbeth by Jesse Green

Sometimes it seems that all the nutty superstitions surrounding Macbeth " pardon me, "the Scottish Play" " come not from its association with Elizabethan witchcraft or backstage mish…

SOURCE: Vulture at 02:29PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Theater Review: The Funny-Sad Complexity of Alan Ayckbourn's Arrivals and Departures by Jesse Green

Arrivals and Departures is Alan Ayckbourn's 78th play, which means (if I have my math right) he's written one each year since birth and three before it. (He's 75.) This may explain or at lea…

SOURCE: Vulture at 10:00PM[SHARE]
Sunday, June 1, 2014

Theater Review: Ionesco's The Killer Is Confusing and Unskippable by Jesse Green

Unable to get much attention amid pre-Tony hysteria and post-Tony exhaustion, some Off Broadway companies seem to take advantage of the blackout to dump inventory. Be warned: June is therefo…

SOURCE: Vulture at 11:23PM[SHARE]
Thursday, May 22, 2014

Theater Review: American Hero Doesn't Deliver by Jesse Green

The woe of hard work " the conflict between the dignity of labor and the indignity of actual laboring " has long been a favorite theatrical theme, with only the particulars changing to suit …

SOURCE: Vulture at 10:00PM[SHARE]
Sunday, May 18, 2014

Theater Review: Try To Avoid Too Much Sun by Jesse Green

Euripides wasn't much of a yock-meister, but his Medea is getting most of the laughs in Nicky Silver's new supposed-to-be-a-comedy, Too Much Sun. Now at the Vineyard in a grim production dir…

SOURCE: Vulture at 10:00PM[SHARE]
Friday, May 9, 2014

Theater Review: Irma la Douce -- Vulture by Jesse Green

Whores are so jolly. At least in France. Take Irma la Douce, that charming poule: What won't she get into! First, she falls in love with a law student who figures out a way to get her off th…

SOURCE: Vulture at 04:53PM[SHARE]
Sunday, January 26, 2014

Showtime by Jesse Green

Find your theatrical match.

SOURCE: New York Magazine at 07:38PM[SHARE]
Monday, January 13, 2014

Theater Review: A Natural Woman and Not Much Else in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical by Jesse Green

If the recently dead Funny Girl revival ever gets resurrected, producers should look no further than the stage of the Stephen Sondheim Theatre for their Fanny Brice.

SOURCE: Vulture at 04:57PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Jesse Green's Top 10 Plays of 2013 -- Vulture by Jesse Green

Fun Home, The Glass Menagerie, and more.

SOURCE: Vulture at 04:43PM[SHARE]
Sunday, December 8, 2013

The 10 Best Plays of the Year by Jesse Green

Jesse Green on The Flick, Fun Home, The Glass Menagerie, and more.

SOURCE: New York Magazine at 07:27PM[SHARE]
Monday, November 4, 2013

Theater Review: After Midnight -- Vulture by Jesse Green

Opulent yet tasteful, wild but disciplined, kinetic and sexy but smart, smart, smart.

SOURCE: Vulture at 04:33PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Theater Review: The Nance Makes Ideal Use of Nathan Lane by Jesse Green

Douglas Carter Beane has written Nathan Lane his best new role in years.-- Delivered by Feed43 service

SOURCE: Vulture at 04:29AM[SHARE]
Sunday, March 4, 2012

“When in Doubt, Seduce” by Jesse Green

Mike Nichols" director of the new revival of Death of a Salesman"has always had a knack for making people cry, or laugh until they cry, or both.

SOURCE: New York Magazine at 09:52PM[SHARE]
Monday, December 26, 2011

A House of Mirrors Called 'Smash' by Jesse Green

The TV show about the making of a Broadway musical that could actually become a Broadway musical. Starring Debra Messing, Marilyn Monroe, Theresa Rebeck, the guys who did Hairspray, and Ste…

SOURCE: New York Magazine at 08:15AM[SHARE]
Sunday, August 14, 2011

Sondheim Baby by Jesse Green

Bernadette Peters goes from boop-a-doop to dark.

SOURCE: New York Magazine at 10:28PM[SHARE]

All that Chat

2025-2026 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 12, 2025: Call Me Izzy - Studio 54
Sep 16, 2025: Art - Music Box Theatre
Oct 08, 2025: Beetlejuice - Palace Theatre
Nov 13, 2025: Oedipus - Studio 54
Nov 16, 2025: Chess - Imperial Theatre
Mar 23, 2026: Giant - Music Box Theatre
Apr 06, 2026: Becky Shaw - Hayes Theater
Apr 16, 2026: Proof - Booth Theatre
Apr 26, 2026: Drama Desk Cut-Off