470 stories by "Jacob Malizio"
Election night. The polls predict a landslide victory. Everything is about to change. Direct from a sold-out, record-breaking, Olivier Award-winning West End run, Sophocles' epic tragedy is …
Icke's change in timeline trades catastrophe for suspense, ontological disaster for down-to-the-cuticles nail biting. Is this a fair exchange? Maybe. Is it electrifying? God, yes. The result…
His Oedipus, while glowing with his usual whip-smart language, doesn't have much fun in the toppling. Each domino falls ("I killed who?! You're my what?") with complete earnestness, and with…
Mark Strong and Lesley Manville, giving two of this year's great performances, lead a brilliant cast that turns this millennia-old story of pride and familial dysfunction into a timely polit…
The biggest pleasure of this prestige production is watching how Icke pastes these modern references onto a classic story. It's often fun to watch, but never more than clever.
The post Mark …
It's where we learn her story in all its graphic detail, and though Manville is one hell of an actor"utterly at ease in one moment, ferocious in the next, destroyed in the one after that"eve…
Reid, Strong and Manville are transfixing as awful revelation after revelation comes to light. Strong's nice guy gives way to brutishness and boiling blood, and Manville's heretofore stalwar…
And above all there is his wife, Jocasta, who"as played by the great Lesley Manville"is a creature of effortless fascination: confident, worldly, intelligent, practical passionate, sexually …
Icke's work is really something: I can't recall ever previously being as riveted at a Greek tragedy. And my admiration for his show is increased by how Icke manages to stay remarkably true t…
The taut spin on "Oedipus" now on Broadway after a West End run last fall is a rare and magnificent feat of adaptation: Writer and director Robert Icke draws Sophocles' ancient play into the…
The post The Queen of Versailles appeared first on Did They Like It?.
And Chenoweth is a wonder, sounding a little bit country whenever Jackie is most herself, as in "Each and Every Day," a love song to the infant Victoria; taking her high notes out for a spin…
Saddled with an unmemorable score by Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin) and a confused book by Lindsey Ferrentino (Amy and the Orphans), Versailles glides by as bland bio-musical for much of …
This A-list team has been able to create some genuinely arresting moments, but they are fleeting in a busy show that still doesn't quite know what story it wants to tell. It's like a house t…
There is a two-hour-and-40-minute luxury-car crash happening at the St. James Theatre. If I were the litigious type, I'd be trying to figure out how to sue for whiplash. Instead, here I am s…
The performances, including a megatallented ensemble, are also excellent. As expected, Chenoweth is a force, and though Jackie isn't really a "likable" figure, the Emmy Award winner draws ou…
Like the 90,000"square-foot, $100-million palace that the Siegels are determined to build for themselves in Orlando, The Queen of Versailles is nothing if not ambitious. But like that same p…
I hoped the tag-team of Chenoweth and Arden would have magic to do. No such luck. The actress is a theatrical force, as everybody knows, but Simone Biles can't do a back handspring on a toot…
Much like the ill-fated Tammy Faye from last year, Versailles (directed by Michael Arden) toggles between different modus operandi " in this case, campy comedic sendup, surface level social …
But The Queen of Versailles isn't camp. It's cheap tat, queasy spectacle, grubby glitz. It doesn't burrow beneath its surface wealth to ask anything of substance.
The post Kristin Chenoweth'…
Set on the remote edge of a small Idaho town, LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD centers on a razor-tongued aunt and her long-estranged nephew who find themselves suddenly back in each other's lives " t…
As played by a glorious Laurie Metcalf in Samuel D. Hunter's keen-eyed, compassionate play "Little Bear Ridge Road," which opened on Thursday night at the Booth Theater, she is also one of t…
Little Bear Ridge Road is a quietly triumphant debut for Hunter, an American playwright who sees the country we truly inhabit, rather than the one we like to imagine we do.
The post Little B…
Moments of big emotion in "Little Bear Ridge Road" don't fall flat, exactly, but they don't play to Hunter's strengths as a writer; he's better in small, askew gestures.
The post Laurie Metc…
Little Bear Ridge Road, which runs about 95 minutes (with no intermission), serves as a showcase and masterclass of Metcalf's acting abilities and command of the stage. Over and over again, …
