122 stories by "David Kaufman"
Usually considered one of Sondheim's lesser musicals, albeit with one of his best scores--and needless to say, that's saying a lot--this production provides a heft and a story that are sorel…
Welcome to "The Waiting Game," a play by Charles Gershman, which has the makings for a meaningful drama, but never really amounts to much. A large part of the problem is the nondescript and …
Yaël Farber's adaptation of Strindberg's classic "Miss Julie," "Mies Julie" shifts the scene and setting from 1880's Sweden to the Karoo in South Africa on Freedom Day in 2012--or the ann…
Having seen it at least four times before, I can say with certainty that Sam Shepard's "True West" (1980) is a firm and solid play: a play to be pondered both while you're watching it and af…
The lit pumpkin on a ledge in the living room aptly suits the title of "Trick or Treat," a new play by Jack Neary. But despite the skeleton positioned on yet another shelf, the play's title …
Now playing at the MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway, "Choir Boy" is set at The Charles R Drew Preparatory School for Boys, a Catholic academy for young men of color. Written by T…
"The Prom" is giving Broadway something it's been lacking for years, which is a high-spirited, old-fashioned musical comedy, where the cast's energy spills out over the footlights, and is th…
Some novels are more stage-worthy than others, and "C.S. Lewis'Â The Screwtape Letters" is not among those that are. As adapted for the stage by Max McLean--who also directs the production…
Though it was common practice centuries ago, perhaps the final take-away from "Bitter Greens"--a new play by Clea DeCrane--is that an actor should not perform in her own work. In the play, D…
The attempt to draw comparisons between two disparate one-act plays by Brian Friel proves forced and effortful. In a program note for "Two by Friel," now playing at the Irish Repertory Theat…
The Classic Stage Company's current revival of Bertolt Brecht's "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" is not the first to draw comparisons between the sitting president and Hitler. In 2002, or …
Even with the indelible impression of Eileen Heckart's magnificent, original Gladys intact, Elaine May overcomes any comparisons as the current Gladys. There is nothing inventive or even art…
In an apparent effort to demonstrate that he's become one of us, Mandvi arrives in the theater by walking down the central aisle at the Minetta Lane Theatre, wide-eyed, as he peers and takes…
From its dramatic opening, there's nowhere for "Goodbody" to go but down, even if Ernst keeps raising the stakes with complicated backstories and developments that leave one breathlessly con…
Channing is by turns aggressive, assertive, jittery, neurotic, imperious, and even petulant in the first act, only to become bewildered and subdued in the second. To rewrite Dorothy Parker's…
Though its title couldn't be clearer or more transparent, "Hitler's Tasters" proves anything but that, as it merges the past, when Hitler was still alive, with the present, when fresh autocr…
It isn't revealing too much to say that the play culminates with a real Snooker match between two men vying ultimately for the world championship and ostensibly being watched by 23 millions …
A play that tends to say or do too much can often end up saying too little. Such is the case with "The Other Day," a play in which one development after another keeps cancelling each other o…
Though the large ensemble of 11 actors is uniformly first rate--whether going through their balletic paces or tossing the invisible basketball and grasping it by clapping their hands, Pamela…
What's missing from the nondescript music is originality, soul or spirit, and the same can be said about the book. Under the guidance of director James Will McBride, the cast, however, featu…
Though there are recurring references to Woody Allen and more specifically to "Annie Hall" during the 90-minute piece, "Less Than 50%" bears as much resemblance to that Oscar-winning film as…
Given how physically playful the brothers are with each other--and with their father--"Straight White Men" is that rare play that even has a credited choreographer, Faye Driscoll. In additio…
Built in 1904, Dreamland was considered the most elegant and ambitious of Coney Island's amusement parks--until it burnt to a crisp in 1911. A new play by Rinne Groff, "Fire in Dreamland" is…
The cast list in the program reads more like a medieval phone-directory--even if there were no phones in the Middle Ages--than it does a dramatis personae. And then there's what happens to t…
After establishing himself as one of our finest playwrights with such works as "Killer Joe" and "August: Osage County," Tracy Letts seems to have somewhat lost his way with his more recent "…
