This 1877 operetta, now celebrating its 140th anniversary, has been reduced to the nine major roles and the chorus has been eliminated. The result is a streamlined version that moves along a…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 06:35PMAlthough the plot has been reset in Loveless, Texas and New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1929, it is an improvement over the original story as a romantic comedy: Shakespeare’s version ends wi…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 01:44PMAs Blixen, Pelletier is riveting as she wraps her cocoon around the unsuspecting but susceptible young man. Catlike and sinuous as she stalks him and the stage, she is cajoling, seductive, m…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:08PMThe newly reconstituted New York City Opera opened its second full season with a shared production of Puccini’s rarely performed "La Fanciulla del West" created in collaboration with the T…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:44PMPerformed by The Bats, the resident company of The Flea Theater, the world premiere of "Inanimate" is the inaugural production in their new home on Thomas Street, between Church and Broadway…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 09:40PMExquisitely produced by the Mint Theater, Jonathan Bank’s direction is leisurely and slow, which undercuts the theatricality of all but the last and the most satisfying one, 'The King of S…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:15PMWhile the three plays in Summer Shorts 2017: Festival of New American Short Plays – Series B have been given proficient productions each seems ultimately unsatisfactory. All seem like firs…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 09:38PMBruce Norris’ "A Parallelogram" endeavors to explore some sobering facts about the effect of the future on the present and responsibility to others. Unfortunately, the play ends up being l…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 09:19PMThe revival at the York is being seen in yet a new version of the show that began as a cabaret in 1981 and went to Broadway in 1985. Created by director Larry Alford, choreographer Wayne Alf…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:31PMAlthough the physical production has been well-thought-out, the script seems to have no interpretation other than a great deal of slapstick comedy which does not much register. The cast vari…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 05:50PM"Acolyte" by Graham Moore, Academy Award winner for his 2013 screenplay for "The Imitation Game," is a more substantial play than the other two. Based on an historical occurrence in 1954, it…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 01:35PMAside from the destructive nature of the storm and that the "Pegasus" eventually arrives at a desert shore, there isn’t much to be learned about climate change. We never know if Sleeper lo…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 08:36PMFrom Dominique Morisseau, the author of the critically acclaimed Skeleton Crew, Detroit ’67 and Sunset Baby, comes another powerfully provocative and riveting, but overwrought, play which …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:49PMIcke and MacMillan’s version is tricked up with much multimedia, sound and lights, and disorientation. Faithful to the book, it claims to be the first adaptation to include Orwell’s appe…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 09:37PMTrue, here these Italian American sisters growing up in Park Slope, 1960, don’t want to get to some place as much as get away from someplace else. As they exit their teens, their home has …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:08AMDirector Albert Schultz’s program note explains that the production set itself two challenges: first, that Philip Carey would never leave the 16-foot red square center stage, and that all …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:38PMBastard Jones is surprisingly accessible for a contemporary musical based on a long and episodic 18th century novel. Sophisticated and off-color, naughty but nice, it proves to be a sharp an…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:03PMThe Wall is also used by the performers who climb on it, disappear into it, and use it as both a platform and a launching pad. The most remarkable act is the finale – the “Trampo Wall”…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:10PMHe has updated the play to a contemporary city rife with decadence and corruption. The audience enters the theater from backstage in order to visit Mistress Overdone’s brothel with sex toy…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:39PMTold mainly in reenacted flashbacks, In a Word plays multiple language games. It also proves the limits of language. Can you really describe exactly what happens at any given moment? And if …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:46PMThe play is enlightening for a physically abled audience as to the needs of the disabled both physically and emotionally. Both stories include a tender, poignant bathing scene as the caretak…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 09:34PM"Sweetee" is an admirable attempt to depict determination in the face of prejudice in the Deep South 80 years ago. While the cast appears to be older than their characters, they make a valia…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 05:29PMLike in a Noel Coward comedy, the witty zingers come fast and furious: “That her big white Cadillac looks like a pregnant Frigidaire,” “Did you say she was from Newark or Noah’s Ark?…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:20PMSay this for actor Hamish Linklater: he writes juicy parts for his fellow actors. He also knows how to set up a sense of community. The New Group production directed by its artistic director…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 01:15AMUnlike such political plays as Arthur Miller’s "The Crucible," David Hare’s "Stuff Happens" and the current "Oslo" by J.T. Rogers, Building the Wall is speculative political fiction. Pro…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:25PMExpect great things from Udofia in the future. Both plays demonstrate that she writes full-bodied, three-dimensional characters, while "Her Portmanteau" reveals that she can also write a pla…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:14PMThe playing space designed by Doyle is a narrow white runway with a stool at one end and at the other, an archway created by continuing the flooring into the air on which Japanese writing ap…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:31AMDirector Jesse Marchese has cast the play very strangely. Ari Brand’s Bob is a good deal shorter than his younger brother so that one must continually remind one’s self which is which. A…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:55PMThe opening resembles that of Mann’s novel: a horse and buggy deliver a visitor to a tuberculosis sanitarium on a mountain top overlooking a valley, suggesting that the unspecified time is…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 12:01AMHnath’s new story is absorbing and twisty, interestingly creating an entirely new set of ethical and social questions than was handled by Ibsen in 1879. He has handled it in a similar fash…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:56PMMcCollum is both charming and charismatic playing among other characters the self-entitled and irresponsible Bruce, the hippie techie Sal, Kat’s spaced-out boss Madison, and the intrepid a…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 07:30PM
