Saturday, August 12, 2017
While the three plays in Summer Shorts 2017: Festival of New American Short Plays – Series B have been given proficient productions each seems ultimately unsatisfactory. All seem like firs…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 09:38PMFriday, August 11, 2017
Bruce Norris’ "A Parallelogram" endeavors to explore some sobering facts about the effect of the future on the present and responsibility to others. Unfortunately, the play ends up being l…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 09:19PMTuesday, August 8, 2017
The revival at the York is being seen in yet a new version of the show that began as a cabaret in 1981 and went to Broadway in 1985. Created by director Larry Alford, choreographer Wayne Alf…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 04:31PMSaturday, August 5, 2017
Although the physical production has been well-thought-out, the script seems to have no interpretation other than a great deal of slapstick comedy which does not much register. The cast vari…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 05:50PMWednesday, August 2, 2017
"Acolyte" by Graham Moore, Academy Award winner for his 2013 screenplay for "The Imitation Game," is a more substantial play than the other two. Based on an historical occurrence in 1954, it…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 01:35PMMonday, July 31, 2017
Aside from the destructive nature of the storm and that the "Pegasus" eventually arrives at a desert shore, there isn’t much to be learned about climate change. We never know if Sleeper lo…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 08:36PMSunday, July 30, 2017
From Dominique Morisseau, the author of the critically acclaimed Skeleton Crew, Detroit ’67 and Sunset Baby, comes another powerfully provocative and riveting, but overwrought, play which …
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 11:49PMThursday, July 13, 2017
Icke and MacMillan’s version is tricked up with much multimedia, sound and lights, and disorientation. Faithful to the book, it claims to be the first adaptation to include Orwell’s appe…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 09:37PMWednesday, July 12, 2017
True, here these Italian American sisters growing up in Park Slope, 1960, don’t want to get to some place as much as get away from someplace else. As they exit their teens, their home has …
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 10:08AMMonday, July 10, 2017
Director Albert Schultz’s program note explains that the production set itself two challenges: first, that Philip Carey would never leave the 16-foot red square center stage, and that all …
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 10:38PMSunday, July 9, 2017
Bastard Jones is surprisingly accessible for a contemporary musical based on a long and episodic 18th century novel. Sophisticated and off-color, naughty but nice, it proves to be a sharp an…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 10:03PMFriday, July 7, 2017
The Wall is also used by the performers who climb on it, disappear into it, and use it as both a platform and a launching pad. The most remarkable act is the finale – the “Trampo Wall”…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 10:10PMSunday, July 2, 2017
He has updated the play to a contemporary city rife with decadence and corruption. The audience enters the theater from backstage in order to visit Mistress Overdone’s brothel with sex toy…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 03:39PMSaturday, July 1, 2017
Told mainly in reenacted flashbacks, In a Word plays multiple language games. It also proves the limits of language. Can you really describe exactly what happens at any given moment? And if …
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 11:46PMFriday, June 30, 2017
The play is enlightening for a physically abled audience as to the needs of the disabled both physically and emotionally. Both stories include a tender, poignant bathing scene as the caretak…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 09:34PMSaturday, June 10, 2017
"Sweetee" is an admirable attempt to depict determination in the face of prejudice in the Deep South 80 years ago. While the cast appears to be older than their characters, they make a valia…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 05:29PMFriday, June 9, 2017
Like in a Noel Coward comedy, the witty zingers come fast and furious: “That her big white Cadillac looks like a pregnant Frigidaire,” “Did you say she was from Newark or Noah’s Ark?…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 04:20PMTuesday, June 6, 2017
Say this for actor Hamish Linklater: he writes juicy parts for his fellow actors. He also knows how to set up a sense of community. The New Group production directed by its artistic director…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 01:15AMWednesday, May 31, 2017
Unlike such political plays as Arthur Miller’s "The Crucible," David Hare’s "Stuff Happens" and the current "Oslo" by J.T. Rogers, Building the Wall is speculative political fiction. Pro…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 04:25PMExpect great things from Udofia in the future. Both plays demonstrate that she writes full-bodied, three-dimensional characters, while "Her Portmanteau" reveals that she can also write a pla…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 04:14PMTuesday, May 23, 2017
The playing space designed by Doyle is a narrow white runway with a stool at one end and at the other, an archway created by continuing the flooring into the air on which Japanese writing ap…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 11:31AMFriday, May 19, 2017
Director Jesse Marchese has cast the play very strangely. Ari Brand’s Bob is a good deal shorter than his younger brother so that one must continually remind one’s self which is which. A…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 10:55PMThursday, May 18, 2017
The opening resembles that of Mann’s novel: a horse and buggy deliver a visitor to a tuberculosis sanitarium on a mountain top overlooking a valley, suggesting that the unspecified time is…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 12:01AMFriday, May 12, 2017
Hnath’s new story is absorbing and twisty, interestingly creating an entirely new set of ethical and social questions than was handled by Ibsen in 1879. He has handled it in a similar fash…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 11:56PMMcCollum is both charming and charismatic playing among other characters the self-entitled and irresponsible Bruce, the hippie techie Sal, Kat’s spaced-out boss Madison, and the intrepid a…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 07:30PMWednesday, May 10, 2017
Retro Productions’ 50th anniversary revival of Paul Zindel’s "And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little" put the spotlight on an almost forgotten play that is worthy of revival. Shay Gines’ p…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 11:42PMMonday, May 8, 2017
The two leads David Spadora and Morgan Cowling are charming but that isn’t really enough to carry the show. The script isn’t too kind to their parents. As Big Harry, Lenny Wolpe is overb…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 01:24PMFriday, May 5, 2017
Although the play seems to have something to say about economics and political systems, it is simply a very light romantic comedy making use of elements of change during the Great Depression…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 09:47PMThursday, April 27, 2017
Written by the same team that created the musical version of "Grey Gardens" (Doug Wright, book, Scott Frankel, music, and Michael Korie, lyrics) which gave Ebersole the two best roles of her…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 02:41PMSunday, April 23, 2017
As the ageing matinee idol who never forgets to check his appearance in the mirror, Kline plays a man who is always acting, both on stage and off. His animated physicality in his roles has a…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 11:43PMWednesday, April 19, 2017
The play seems to be in the genre of the classic Western movie though highly poeticized and slow-paced. It resembles the 60’s films of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah but with much less plo…
Linked From www.theaterscene.net at 11:49AM 
