Thursday, September 13, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, September 13, 2018 How many Betties does it take to make a great play? Five, if the new play from the MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel is any proof. Colle…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 11:05AMTuesday, September 11, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, September 11, 2018 It’s a story we’ve heard so often that we have to fight complacency: a young man is shot and killed by police, for doing nothing mor…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 11:46AMTuesday, June 19, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, June 19, 2018 After last summer’s uproariously trumped-up and absurdly controversial Julius Caesar and the magical elder fairyland of Midsummer Night’s…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 10:14AMTuesday, May 1, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, May 1, 2018 Warning: This is not a play for the depressed, the downhearted, the despairing, or the dejected. Even though the current incarnation of Eugene …
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 11:39AMThursday, April 26, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, April 26, 2018 Sometimes a little madness goes a long way. Especially on stage. And especially in the story of Saint Joan. But what happens when Joan, the …
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 09:35AMThursday, April 12, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, April 12, 2018 If you don’t know what “fetch” means, perhaps this isn’t the show for you. But for those of us who think the 2004 film, writ…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 09:35AMThursday, March 29, 2018
Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, March 29, 2018 First, let me report that the just renovated new Broadway home of Second Stage Theater, the Helen Hayes, is just grand. Intimate and grand, whi…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 11:03AMTuesday, March 13, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, March 13, 2018 Let’s give playwright Joshua Harmon a whole lot of credit for taking on the hot-button issue of diversity without preaching or pulling any…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 10:52AMFriday, March 9, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, March 9, 2018 Sometimes I get stuck on the details. Like how a brother and sister well into their sixties (he says he’s 60 but I don’t buy it) can have…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 09:36AMTuesday, March 6, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, March 6, 2018 It has nothing to do with royalty. The women who occupy this illegal basement apartment in the borough of Queens are about as far from royal …
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 11:55AMMonday, February 26, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, February 26, 2018 In Relevance, the deeply underwritten new play by JC Lee, Jayne Houdyshell assays a role usually played by a man: an arrogant, aging lio…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 12:15PMThursday, February 22, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, February 22, 2018 In Edward Albee’s world, people quarrel, threaten, argue, fight, and struggle against each other. They bite, tussle, demean, condemn. H…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 10:02AMTuesday, February 6, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, February 6, 2018 If you’ve ever wondered what a silver-tongued devil looks like, head over to the Linda Gross Theater and check out the Atlantic Theater …
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 09:51AMFriday, February 2, 2018
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, February 2, 2018 Is there a theatrical term for a biopic? You know, a movie that covers the life (or portion of the life) of someone, usually a famous some…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 11:07AMThursday, December 28, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 28, 2017 I wish all monsters looked like Robert Fairchild. In this latest effort from the Ensemble for the Romantic Century, Fairchild, as Mary Sh…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 09:17AMMonday, December 18, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 18, 2017 Did you know that musical therapy was invented in the 18th century? Apparently it was, when the world-renowned castrato Carlo Maria Mich…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 03:43PMWednesday, December 13, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 12, 2017 From the moment you enter the theater, you know something ain’t right. Things are cockeyed. Maybe it’s the bottle of wine you had at …
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 12:03AMWednesday, December 6, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 6, 2017 Rajiv Joseph’s last play at the Atlantic Theater, Guards at the Taj, featured so much blood that the two women in front of me walked…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 01:58PMMonday, December 4, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 4, 2017 A few years ago, still in the throws of my Next to Normal obsession, when I was staying up way too late watching every crappy phone-filmed…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 02:16PMBy Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 4, 2017 There’s so much going on in the new revival of Once On This Island, which opened last night at Circle in the Square, that it’s hard to…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 09:48AMFriday, December 1, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 1, 2017 There’s something remarkable going on at the Hudson Theatre, where Beau Willimon’s new play The Parisian Woman, directed by Pam MacKin…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 10:06AMFriday, November 3, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, November 3, 2017 Ayad Akhtar’s 2013 play Disgraced garnered fine reviews and a Pulitzer for its nuanced exploration of racial and religious divides. It o…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 10:17AMTuesday, October 31, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, October 31, 2017 If you have no idea what M. Butterfly is about and plan to see the play, now on Broadway with Clive Owen and Jin Ha starring, quit reading…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 09:53AMFriday, October 20, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, October 20, 2017 There’s something off about Lonely Planet. This play should sear and burn, should leave you choking for air. And maybe it did, when Stev…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 11:48AMBy Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, October 20, 2017 A confession: I never saw the original Torch Song Trilogy, or the three separate plays that came before it. So I have nothing to compare i…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 10:33AMWednesday, October 11, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, October 11, 2017 Who knew the Countess of Grantham had it in her? After years of playing the good-hearted American mom on everyone’s favorite British soa…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 01:34PMFriday, September 29, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, September 29, 2017 “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” Is it just because I have a birthday coming up that I find those words…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 01:11PMTuesday, August 1, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, August 1, 2017 Lord, what fools these mortals, and fairies, and royals be! Director Lear deBessonet’s new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dre…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 09:56PMWednesday, July 19, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, July 19, 2017 For years, I’ve been threatening to write a book entitled Everything I Know I Learned from Musical Theater. I have Andrew Lloyd Webber to t…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 10:34AMFriday, June 30, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, June 30, 2017 There’s a lovely and unexpected moment that comes near the end of the new production of the 1991 play Marvin’s Room by Scott McPherson. I…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 10:41AMWednesday, June 21, 2017
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, June 21, 2017 There’s a long strip of a stage. A folding chair. And six orange cones. But something is missing in the lives of the folks in the new M…
SOURCE: www.zealnyc.com at 11:50AM 
