Seemingly not trusting the material, director Brian Mertes has used all kinds of stage gimmicks including having the two actors photographed live by a team of three videographers whose equip…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:16PMWhen was the last time you saw a new play in which you cared about the characters and wanted them to end up together? "The Sabbath Girl: A New Musical" is that kind of show. A delightful and…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:26PMThe play doesn’t tell us enough about any of the characters which gives the actors little to work from. What does Lotte do for a living or is she a trust fund kid? As Lena Drake plays her,…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:46PMActor Ryan Spahn’s first play "Inspired by True Events" at the new Theatre 145 (formerly the Ohio Space) is a professional, skillful production. Unfortunately, as a backstage thriller it l…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 01:22PMMaría Irene Fornés’ rediscovered "La Viuda" is a valuable addition to her better known canon. It is a challenging play in that it is basically an 80-minute monologue with other character…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 07:31PMIn "Empire," Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull attempt to tell a very big story but are unable to bring this unwieldy tale into suitable shape. The time traveling framework is both unnecessar…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 12:39PMCorrea who for many years worked for Congresswoman Constance A. Morella knows his way around government and his characters are very convincing. The casting of Diane Paulus’ production is s…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 09:16PMDavid McDonald has discovered onto an obscure and interesting story: 15-year-old Ella Fitzgerald’s incarceration in the New York Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York, after her mo…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:34PMIt is the first year that Haley’s comet has been predicted. Sally Poppy, trapped in a loveless marriage at age 21, has committed a murder with her lover of a child from a rich family she h…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:14PMThe play is framed, movie style, by a trial of the leading character, so that the bulk of the play becomes a flashback to what led up to it. However, the show which is occasionally amusing i…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:09PM"David" now at the AMT Theater is an ambitious Off Broadway musical dramatizing the story of the youth of the hero David, later second king of Israel. It has a bouncy contemporary score by A…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:59PMWhile most of the songs presented were standards, there were some oddities and curiosities like five cuts songs, one song from a Ford Motor Company industrial show by Bock and Harnick, and t…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:30PMThe dialogue is smart and sophisticated. The author’s unfocused theme seems to be the conflict between Marina and Nikki as to journalistic ethics. Marina believes in reporting the story wh…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:04PMAshley Griffin’s "The Opposite of Love" is not afraid to tackle questions of sex, intimacy, abuse and suicide. It does so with great sensitivity and delicacy. It is as though the author do…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:55PMLaura Winters’ "All of Me" is a lively rom-com of rich boy meets poor girl much on the lines of 1930’s film comedies. However, the new wrinkle here is that Lucy is disabled using a motor…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:50PMPlaywright Jake Shore has something serious on his mind but his scatter-shot take on Artificial Intelligence does not make the case. The repetitious dialogue and events only undercut the int…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:20PMRonnie Larsen, Allen Lewis Rickman and Jeni Hacker in a scene from Larsen’s “The Actors” at Theatre Row (Photo credit: Russ Rowland) Playwright and actor Ronnie Larsen, best known for …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:55PMDan Lauria’s "Just Another Day" is quite leisurely in its delivery but Lauria and McCormack inhabit their roles. While the play could use some pruning, it is a charming portrait of two eld…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:51AMPlaywright and actor Ronnie Larsen, best known for his series of erotic plays with titles like "Making Porn" and "Sleeping with Straight Men," has now switched to a charmingly humorous Neil …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:22PMThe eye-filling sets by Hannah Beachler and video and projection design by Daniel Brodie include subtle tributes to Black Culture that not all theatergoers may notice on a first look. When D…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 06:22PMThe lead of the show is film star Eddie Redmayne, who won the Olivier Award for his performance as the Emcee in the London production and is also Tony nominated for this show. Director Rebec…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:56PMIn fact, the play which ought to be hilarious is almost devoid of jokes as the premise which is politically incorrect will make many white playgoers uncomfortable – unless this is the poin…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:05PMDirector Nicholas Viselli has done well with the characterizations but is unable to resolve the thinness of the backstories which are not fleshed out by the script. The shallow set which has…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:35PMJessica Burr’s Blessed Unrest production of Marguerite Duras’ "La Musica Deuxième" in the 1992 translation by Barbara Bray is like a violent Jean Paul Sartre short story directed in th…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:24AMThe new musical "Hell’s Kitchen" has made a successful transition to Broadway from The Public Theater and the new version seems to have corrected some of the flaws from before. This juke-b…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:58PMThings are not helped by Mini Lien’s bland setting that looks more like a furniture showroom than the family manse held for decades and passed down to the present inhabitants. The new adap…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:48PMIn the very first scene it becomes apparent that we are watching "The Pursuit of Happiness," a new play from the Good Company, an indie theater group that has been known for radical and expe…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:01PMA good deal of fun is had by Brian Pacelli’s projection design which is shown on the modern and chic living room/dining room set by Christopher and Justin Swader. It takes us to the virtua…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:25PMIn attempting to make a feminist statement out of Shakespeare’s "Macbeth", Harris has made Lady Macbeth into the same murderous monster that her husband became in the original. This does n…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:29PMIn telling the life story of Tamara de Lempicka, the show begins with a fascinating premise. Unfortunately, neither the score nor the book lives up to her high standards. Unlike "Sunday in t…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:48PMNelson Diaz-Marcano’s "Las Borinqueñas," the latest play in the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Science and Technology Project, has a fascinating, little known stor…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:59PM