Sunday, March 13, 2011
Photo: Daniel TernaTheChanging Room, by David Storey, is not big on plot. A bunch of Englishmen enter a locker room, kid around, change, and go out to play rugby--Act One. The owner of…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:09PMThursday, March 10, 2011
Until this production, Abe Burrows' Cactus Flower had not had a major New York revival. That was a good thing. It is hard to understand why anyone would want to revive this flat, unbelievabl…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:00PMWednesday, March 9, 2011
Photo: Joan Marcus.Well-done story theatre uses its combination of telling and showing to invite the audience into the creative process. We help the performers invent entire worlds out of&nb…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:33PMIf you look up the word lovely in the dictionary, there she is: Kate Baldwin, with her sweet, pure voice, beautiful smile, and great charm. In her current show at Feinstein's, She Loves Him,…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:57PMTuesday, February 22, 2011
Anthropologist Krystal D'Costa was my companion for The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller. For her insightful take on the show, click here.
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:52AMMonday, February 21, 2011
While watching the Wooster Group's pretentious, pointless, and ham-handed production of Vieux Carré, a question occurred to me: What if it's not that the emperor has no clothes but rather t…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:30PMApple Cove is a satire of people who choose conformity and control to feel less frightened by the rest of the world. The show starts when newlyweds Alan and Edie move to the rule-bound Apple…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:47PMPhoto: Lia ChangIn 1961, the anthropologist Michael Rockefeller, of the business-political-philanthropic Rockefellers, visited the Asmat people deep in the jungles of New Guinea. He fell in …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:04PMThursday, February 17, 2011
Photo: Richard TermineThere are certain things that are devilishly difficult to pull off in a play. One is having middle-aged people reminisce about a shared wild youth without sounding arti…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:00PMSaturday, February 12, 2011
StageGrade provides an important public service for New York theatre-goers: it assembles reviews of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway shows, providing a synopsis, an average grade…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:18PMFriday, February 11, 2011
Photo: Isaiah TanenbaumIn Liz Duffy Adams' amazing new play Dog Act, presented by the Flux Ensemble Theatre, the apocalypse has come and gone, and various tribes scramble to survive in a bar…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:41PMTuesday, February 8, 2011
Photo: James LeynseIn A.R. Gurney's stilted, unconvincing play Black Tie, middle-aged Curtis is thrilled at the prospect of wearing dinner clothes and giving a traditional speech at the r…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:19PMSunday, February 6, 2011
Theodora Skipitares has directed a new version of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, featuring performers wearing Skipitares' masks or life-sized puppets. (The other puppet designers are Jane Catheri…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:20PMThursday, February 3, 2011
Theatrical satires of theatrical performances have many things in common: enthusiastic but oblivious participants, extreme versions of theatrical clichés, and happy endings where the final …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:00PMSaturday, January 29, 2011
Photo: B. DocktorYears ago I took a friend to see his first evening of dance. Afterward, I asked him what he thought. He said, "Beautiful people doing beautiful things with their beautiful …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:08PMWednesday, January 26, 2011
Photo © Susan B. GlattsteinI have decided to start specifying where I sat--and how much I paid to sit there--at the end of every review I write. And here's why:Have you ever gone to see a w…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:01PMTuesday, January 18, 2011
Terri White does not identify a theme to her show at Feinstein's at the Regency, but it is nevertheless clear: the theme is joy. Not that White doesn't sing a sad song or two, and act them n…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:23PMSunday, January 16, 2011
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. The Mild Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore is far from Tennessee Williams' best work. However, it is involving, funny, sexy, and sad. The situation is…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:59PMPhoto: Monique CarboniIs there anything left to be said about dysfunctional families? If so, Tommy Nohilly hasn't found it. His debut play, Blood From a Stone, with its echoes of Sam Shepard…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:20PMWednesday, December 15, 2010
Photo: Joseph AlfordIn a 1915 poem by TS Eliot called "Hysteria," the anxious narrator becomes disturbed by his date's raucous laughter. The show Hysteria, created and performed by the group…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:41PMSunday, December 12, 2010
My knowledge of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit was limited to the line, "Hell is other people," so I grabbed the opportunity to see the Invisible City Theater Company's production of John Bowles…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 03:20PMTom Stoppard is a brilliant playwright, but sometimes he can't tell the difference between a play and a lecture. Hapgood's ratio of physics versus theatre is unfortunately skewed toward the…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:15PMPhoto: Jonathan KeenanSometimes ambiguity adds suspense and atmosphere to a production. Sometimes it is just confusing. At the beginning of Edna O'Brien's Haunted, part of the Brits Off Broa…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:42PMMonday, November 29, 2010
Nyack High School presented an excellent production of The Laramie Project for two performances this month. The pacing could have been quicker, but many of the performances were top-notch, a…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:36PMFriday, November 19, 2010
Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice is a choleric, cynical play.First, of course, there is the ugly anti-Semitism. Shylock, more frequently known as "The Jew," has spent his life being called "…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:12PMWednesday, November 17, 2010
Wow!Last March a few thousand people were lucky enough to experience the truly staggering Sondheim birthday celebration at the New York Philharmonic. Many who saw it (most?) judged it one of…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:08PMPhoto: Holly CasterJoan Collins is a force to be reckoned with. She turned down Darryl Zanuck's (staggeringly coarse) sexual advances, even though she knew she might be risking her career. S…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:16PMThe Broadway Close Up series at Merkin Hall presented a lovely evening of Jerome Kern songs last Monday. There was no patter--just luscious singing. Director Denis Jones set up some of the s…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:45AMSunday, November 14, 2010
Photo: Annie ParisseAs The Amoralists' production of Ghosts in the Cottonwoods begins, we see Bean Scully sucking venom out of her son Pointer's leech bites. He is 18 years old and nude, and…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:27PMPhoto: Michael BrosilowIt is a theatre season of prodigious feats of memory. Mark Rylance in La Bete. Belle Caplis is Balm in Gilead. Bill Camp in Notes From Underground. And now Michael Sha…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:05PMPhoto: Joan Marcus"I am a sick man. I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts." With these classic opening lines of Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground, actor and co-ada…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:10PM 
