All stories by Jesse Green on BroadwayStars

Thursday, September 21, 2023

‘Lunar Eclipse’ Review: A Dark, Cloudy Night of the Soul by Jesse Green

In Donald Margulies’s heavy-handed new play, Reed Birney is terrific as a farmer forced by his wife, played by Karen Allen, to face his grief.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:43AM
Sunday, September 17, 2023

‘Swing State’ Review: All Is Not Well in Wisconsin by Jesse Green

Rebecca Gilman’s play, set in a rural farmhouse, sees an image of the decline of Americans’ interdependence in the death of wildflowers.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:19PM
Tuesday, September 12, 2023

‘Infinite Life’ Review: Is There a Cure for Pain and Desire? by Jesse Green

Illness is no metaphor, and neither is pleasure, in Annie Baker’s weird and great new play set at a fasting clinic.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:55PM
Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Sondheim’s Last Musical, ‘The Wiz’ Revival and More Coming to Broadway This Fall by Jesse Green

Remaking a vintage musical for the 2020s takes guts, sensitivity and perhaps a medium.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:49AM

Have You Met My Collaborator? He’s So Classic, He’s Dead. by Jesse Green

Remaking a vintage musical for the 2020s takes guts, sensitivity and perhaps a medium.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:04AM
Thursday, August 31, 2023

Review: In Central Park, ‘The Tempest’ Sings Farewell to Magic by Jesse Green

A joyful, bumpy musical version of Shakespeare’s late romance closes the Delacorte Theater before an 18-month renovation.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:33AM
Tuesday, August 29, 2023

At a Rejuvenated Stratford, Second Chances for Plays and Theaters by Jesse Green

A smash, a romp, a mess and a mystery are part of this Ontario festival’s 12-play repertoire after two seasons of retrenchment.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:07AM
Thursday, August 24, 2023

Review: Is William Finn’s ‘A New Brain’ a Stroke of Genius? by Jesse Green

Barrington Stage Company’s revival of the 1998 musical brings vocal luster and newfound relevance to the story of a songwriter’s near-death experience.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:34AM
Thursday, August 10, 2023

‘The Shark Is Broken’ Review: A Bloodless Postscript to ‘Jaws’ by Jesse Green

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the theater, a play about the making of Hollywood’s first summer blockbuster bobs up on Broadway.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:37PM
Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Can ’Candide,’ ‘Rent’ and ‘Spamalot’ Ever Be Truly Revived? by Jesse Green

“Candide” in an opera house. “Spamalot” and “Rent” cheek by jowl with Shakespeare. But treating them as classics may not be doing them justice.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:49PM
Thursday, August 3, 2023

‘Back to the Future’ Review: The DeLorean Crash Lands on Broadway by Jesse Green

The addition of 17 songs turns the 1985 sci-fi classic into a big “why?” musical with a big wow factor.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:04PM
Thursday, July 27, 2023

Review: Young Bros and Maidens Harmonize in ‘Love’s Labor’s Lost’ by Jesse Green

This peculiar early Shakespeare comedy gets updated with 10 songs for a youthful alfresco production.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:55AM
Monday, July 24, 2023

Review: The Cocktail Wit Is Watered Down in a Rickety New ‘Cottage’ by Jesse Green

Jason Alexander directs a Broadway farce that aims for the high style of Noël Coward but falls on its face instead.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:33PM
Thursday, July 20, 2023

Review: Dancing With Dictators in David Byrne’s ‘Here Lies Love’ by Jesse Green

A new Broadway musical tells the disturbing story of Imelda Marcos by putting her, and the audience, in a disco.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:07PM
Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Review: This ‘Hamlet’ Under the Stars Is No Walk in the Park by Jesse Green

The Public Theater’s alfresco production has plenty to offer audiences who know the play already. But it may not be so easy for newcomers.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:55PM
Monday, June 26, 2023

‘Just for Us’ Review: A Jew and 16 ‘Nerf Nazis’ Meet Cute by Jesse Green

Is it a stand-up act or a morality play? Either way, Alex Edelman’s look at race, religion and the limits of empathy is at home on Broadway.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:33PM
Friday, June 23, 2023

Sheldon Harnick, Musical Theater’s Great Marriage Broker by Jesse Green

In lyrics of rare humor, elegance and compassion, the man who put words to “Fiddler on the Roof” and “She Loves Me” explored the complex emotional architecture of love.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:43PM
Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Review: A Genderqueer ‘Cabaret,’ at War With Itself by Jesse Green

A revival of the 1998 revisal of the 1966 musical highlights the stories of trans and nonbinary performers.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:33PM
Thursday, June 15, 2023

Review: In ‘The Doctor,’ a Rare Case of Physician, Harm Thyself by Jesse Green

Robert Icke’s surgery on a 1922 play about the disease of antisemitism turns it into a riveting debate about identity. But at what cost to the patient?

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:43PM
Monday, June 12, 2023

Unscripted or Not, the Tonys Were Mostly Predictable by Jesse Green

The writing is on the wall: With or without writers, the Broadway awards are a strangely bland and canned way to celebrate a thrillingly live medium.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:07PM

Best and Worst Moments of the 76th Tony Awards by Jesse Green, Maya Phillips, Elisabeth Vincentelli, Laura Collins-Hughes, Alexis Soloski and Sarah Bahr

With a clever opening number and repeated support for striking writers, the Tonys celebrated Broadway’s shows, performers and creative teams.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:07AM
Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Review: In ‘This Land Was Made,’ Huey Newton Walks Into a Bar by Jesse Green

Tori Sampson’s look at the Black Panther movement is a warm sitcom that becomes a jarring inquest into a real murder.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:49PM
Monday, June 5, 2023

‘The Comeuppance’ Review: a Bigger, Chillier Big Chill by Jesse Green

In his haunting new play, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins updates the reunion genre with too much jungle juice and an otherworldly visitor.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:06PM
Thursday, June 1, 2023

Review: In ‘Grey House,’ Broadway Gets an Expert Haunting by Jesse Green

A new play about a sisterhood of sorrows brings something scary to the stage, but is delivering shocks and icks enough?

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 08:06PM
Tuesday, May 30, 2023

In a City of Monuments, History Lives Onstage and in the Streets by Jesse Green

Three new plays at theaters in Washington explore how the past is both erased and inescapable.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:42PM
Tuesday, May 23, 2023

‘Monsoon Wedding’ Review: Marriage of Musical Styles, With Mixed Results by Jesse Green

Mira Nair’s 2001 movie about a couple brought together by their families becomes a song-filled pageant, with mixed results.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:06AM
Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Tony Awards 2023: Who Will Win (and Who Should) by Jesse Green and Maya Phillips

Jesse Green, the chief theater critic, and Maya Phillips, a critic-at-large, name the shows and artists who they think will win, should win and should have been nominated for this year’s T…

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:32AM

For Broadway Dance, High Kicks and Low Comedy in a Season of Change by Jesse Green, Elisabeth Vincentelli and Brian Seibert

Is theatrical choreography at a turning point? Or just leaping, lurching and shimmying as usual? Our critics weigh in.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:01AM
Thursday, May 4, 2023

‘Oliver!’ Review: Tunes, Glorious Tunes, in a Grimly Cheerful Revival by Jesse Green

The Encores! production, directed by Lear deBessonet, looks to deepen and darken a musical that resists the change. But it’s still delightful.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:42PM
Monday, April 24, 2023

‘Good Night, Oscar’ Review: Sean Hayes With Demerol and Cadenzas by Jesse Green

The “Will & Grace” star is unrecognizable in a Broadway biography of Oscar Levant: wit, pianist and “Eeyore in a cheap suit.”

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:24PM
Sunday, April 23, 2023

Review: In ‘Prima Facie,’ Jodie Comer Makes the Case by Jesse Green

The “Killing Eve” star has a spectacular Broadway debut in a play that puts sexual assault jurisprudence on trial.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:24PM