Six months dark. Thousands of artists out of work. Could this disaster have a surprise ending? Five critics on what must change, onstage and off.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:18AMIt was a flop, but the film adaptation of the Broadway smash turned me on to theater. And those starving artists made me want to make art too.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:06AMTheater in Quarantine’s latest small-scale, digitally savvy production is an adaptation of a Borges story about a man stopping time to stare down death.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:06PMReplete with music, masks and vibrant costumes, “Quince” and “Beast Visit” turn urban green spaces into stages for festivity.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:18PMStaying creative in lockdown means setting the scene for a cat, a baby and a garden. Plus an Instagram account that makes Mom and Dad into art stars.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:32AMTwo critics square off to determine how well this body slam of a comedy, about stereotypes and storytelling, made it to the very small screen.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:54PMA Seeing Place Theater production and a Play-PerView reunion reading by the 2007 Cherry Lane Theater cast bring out different aspects of Amiri Baraka’s famous play.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:48PMSource Material presents a postmodern approach to talking about grief and isolation in quarantine.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:48PMElectric performances, led by André Holland, transcend didacticism in an audio rendition that replaced a Shakespeare in the Park production.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:32PMEfforts like ‘The Oedipus Project’ are worthy, but in an attempt to draw contemporary parallels, they can misread drama and mislead about the present.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:03AMAnimated shows are finally moving away from letting white actors play characters of color. But even well-intentioned efforts at increasing diversity create complications.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:36PMOur critics discuss the last four months, which thanks to Zoom (and Meryl Streep) have been full of experimentation and playfulness.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:54AMAnchored by a charismatically off-kilter performance, this one-woman show asks viewers to judge a young Russian accused of a crime of passion.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:42PMFrom the documentary works of Anna Deavere Smith to brief monologues written in this moment of unrest, dramatists are sounding an alarm.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:03PMDespite charming performances, a Culture Project production works too hard bringing a delicate novella to the stage.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:42AMA solo stage adaptation of Paul Muldoon’s poem considers whether making art can offer solace in the wake of grief.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:36PMThe neighborhood is referrred to constantly, insistently, but doesn’t come to life in Pearl Cleage’s play about a nightclub singer from the 1930s.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:03PMDonnetta Lavinia Grays is winningly uninhibited in her fable-like solo show about a community seduced by a mysterious benefactor.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:24PMEdward Einhorn’s playful play takes on a lot: his scientist grandfather, his aging mother and his own doubts about putting their lives onstage.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:32PMEric Tucker updates the allegorical play about the Salem witch trials, directly implicating the audience in its examination of mass hysteria.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:03PMAn immersive play crossed with an art installation offers sharp angles on race and white supremacy, but is dampened by didactism.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:24PMTawni O’Dell set herself a bracing challenge: Writing and reliving her family’s trauma onstage. But it’s more than the novelist can pull off.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:03PMFriends and family about to be left behind when a young man goes to college reckon with a world of narrow choices in Chad Beckim’s play.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:54PMMr. Sunshine is one of the rare Westerners to become a master of the centuries-old Japanese comic storytelling form.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:33PMA barbed comedy takes a grim turn when friends find themselves tested over how far they’ll go to defend their choices and protect their children.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:54PMChisa Hutchinson’s earnest morality play spends time with a Newark schoolboy and the brusque cafeteria worker he befriends.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:45PMIn this stage memoir, Chesney Show struggles to balance a powerful personal story with historical heft.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:24PMThis “Lysistrata” update at the Flea Theater is consistently lively, but its comic aims are scattershot.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:05PMThis retelling of the ancient Greek queen’s plight, set in the modern Midwest, is hilarious until it takes a grisly turn.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:26PMThe show features jazz, blues and country music from Allan Harris, who also plays the title character.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:18PMThe National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene show is at once a rapid-fire revue and a textbook chronology of Jewish history in New York.
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