Monday, May 25, 2015
The best fairy tales have a dark side, and the best storytellers aren't afraid to address it. Adapting Hans Christian Andersen's "The Red Shoes" -- about a girl who literally can't stop danc…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMThe head writer for "SpongeBob SquarePants," Steven Banks also moonlights as the dark and twisted Billy the Mime. Now, he tries to reconcile his sugar-and-spice sides in a new play, "Lookin…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMSausage, anybody? Actually, John Kelly's "Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte" has nothing to do with meat products and everything to do with Austrian painter Egon Schiele. A skilled chameleon, write…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMCentral Asia is a hair-pulling mess. And as we see in "The Great Game: Afghanistan," it's been a mess for a long time. Covering the years 1842 to the present, this London import tracks a si…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMIrish novelist Edna O'Brien wrote a plum part for Brenda Blethyn in "Haunted," an oblique, wordy play about a waning marriage. The actress returned the favor by grounding the piece with rea…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMA waitress silently prepares for work. Her black-and-white uniform in place, she counts her teeth. No. 31 is AWOL, but she finds it somewhere behind her neck, and slides it back in place. T…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMYou can take Donny and Marie Osmond out of Vegas, but you can't take Vegas out of them. Or is that Branson, Mo.? No matter: The siblings' holiday concert at the Marquis delivers everything …
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMIt's not often that you hear Schubert's melan choly song cycle "Win terreise" ("Winter Journey") in a down town theater. And not with classical musicians, either, but with three scruffy dud…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMHow tepid was Broadway this year? The most talked-about show didn't even open. While waiting -- and waiting, and waiting -- for "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" to take flight, we watched a …
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMJust when Broadway and off- Broadway go into their post- holiday hibernation, Performance Space 122 steps in with out-there productions aimed at the head, the guts and the heart. No wonder …
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMThe woefully inept drama "Dracula," which opened off- Broadway last night, is as close as we get to dinner theater in New York. There's no prime rib, but plenty of grating cheese. While it …
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMLocation, location, location: That motto applies not only to real estate but to theater. Tennessee Williams' one-act play "Green Eyes" may be slight, but staging it in an actual hotel room -…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMA lot of energy is spent setting up an explo sive situation in the family drama "Blood From a Stone." But despite the efforts of a strong cast led by Ethan Hawke -- giving his best performa…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMMisery springs eternal. We've seen dozens of fictional families clash be cause of a Big Traumatic Past Event, but that didn't deter Jon Robin Baitz ("The Substance of Fire," TV's "Brothers …
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMIbsen's "John Gabriel Bork man" is nowhere near as popu lar as his "Hedda Gabler" and "A Doll's House." Yet crowds are flocking to this obscure 1896 play at BAM. What gives? One reason is t…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMA charismatic, seductive tycoon is key to Scott Brooks' new comedy, "ScreenPlay." Had a charismatic, seductive leading man been cast, this wan Hollywood satire might have gone somewhere. Unf…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMThe new "Room 17B" is like an anthology of clown haikus -- a se ries of self-contained routines, each one brief, elegant and perfectly balanced. Presented by the physical-comedy company Par…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMAfter the critical success of his epic "The Lily's Revenge" last year, all eyes were on Taylor Mac. Amid a cast of 40, the strikingly made-up and costumed writer-performer blossomed in the …
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMMoliere's dark comedy "The Misanthrope" is one of the most cynical and twisted works in the canon, and deserves to be better known in America. Maybe we need a Hollywood update to show new a…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMWhen you think about David Auburn, author of the math-and-madness hit "Proof," farce isn't the first thing that comes to mind. So his decision to overhaul "The New York Idea" -- an obscure …
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMThe key character in "What the Public Wants" is a driven media tycoon who reaches millions via dozens of publications. Through them, he seeks to entertain the many and influence the mighty.…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMWhile Tennessee Williams is acknowledged as a master, his later plays are theater's answer to the madwoman in the attic: Producers and directors either ignore them entirely, or tread ginger…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMAn early scene in the new off- Broadway play "The Whipping Man" demonstrates the devastating power of words. We're in April 1865 and the war has just ended. A young Confederate soldier, Cal…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMDoug is a living nightmare for health-insurance companies: He's more than accident-prone -- he's a lightning rod for calamities. In Rajiv Joseph's uneven play "Gruesome Playground Injuries,…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMAlthough Encores! productions such as "Gypsy," "Chicago" and "Finian's Rainbow" have made it to Broadway, fans of the long-running City Center series know such transfers are beside the poin…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMGiving a blank check to Bono, The Edge and Julie Taymor to create a musical seemed like a brilliant idea, once upon a time.U2's worldwide success and the director's track record (“The …
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMWhat did come as a bit of a shock was the open glee with which some critics took down the show. It's as if they were happy the musical wasn't good, and I'm not sure that's an appropriate fra…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMThe prolific A.R. Gurney has made a specialty of documenting a certain slice of America: Northeast-based, white, middle-class families bound by a strong sense of kinship and precisely delin…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMIn the early '80s, the late mono loguist Spalding Gray created a show called "Interviewing the Audience" in which he did just that. He brought random theatergoers onstage and got them to op…
SOURCE: The New York Post Subscription at 05:58PMIt's not every day that we get a former Bond Girl on a New York stage -- a Bond Girl who isn't Diana Rigg, that is.
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