5,801 stories by "Jonathan Mandell"
Lizzie Vieh's black comedy about a divorced couple permanently underwater in Phoenix Arizona, is clever and merciless, but it is also oddly compassionate. Exhibit A is the bit with the hermi…
How much were you paying attention to New York theater in October? Take this quiz and find out. Â
 Below is a selection of New York theater opening in November, organized chronologically by opening date, including five on Broadway "  a much anticipated epic gay play, a blockbuster…
"The Sound Inside" is a dark drama by Adam Rapp that keeps us in the dark, literally and figuratively, which works better while watching it on stage than thinking about it afterwards. Mary-L…
William Shakespeare's only son, named Hamnet, died when he was 11 years old; a few years later, the playwright wrote "Hamlet." Â The Irish theater troupe Dead Centre conjures up the Bard's…
 "How do we fight evil without becoming evil?" asks Ethan, one of the two adult characters in "Fear," a play by Matt Williams.  "Isn't that the central question of the age, this age o…
Freestyle Love Supreme is not so much Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway follow-up to Hamilton as it is a subsidiary of Lin-Manuel Inc. The hip-hop improv group that Miranda co-founded 16 years a…
"Freestyle Love Supreme" is not so much Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway follow-up to "Hamilton" as it is a subsidiary of Lin-Manuel Inc. Â The hip-hop improv group that Miranda co-founded 16…
Theresa Rebeck's slight but savory comedy about running a restaurant stars Raúl Esparza as Harry, a hilariously mercurial chef-owner of a hole-in-the-wall eatery that's become…
Refugees are in the news these days, and their stories have suddenly come to New York stages. "I think it is important to ask an audience to recognize lives that we have literally fenced off…
Three years after he spoofed "Hamilton" in "Spamilton" (with "I am not throwing away my shot" becoming "I am not gonna let Broadway rot,") Gerard Alessandrini paints Lin-Manuel Miranda less …
I think if I were eight years old I might have loved "The Lightning Thief" on Broadway, but that's mostly because I would then have been too young to have seen it at the Lucille Lortel Theat…
There is one spectacularly funny moment in this musical comedy version of "Macbeth," which is based on Billy Morrissette's 2001 movie, and is set in a fast-food restaurant in the "podunk tow…
Forty-one years after Broadway said goodbye after 742 thrilling performances to its first (and last) choreopoem, and a year after its author and original performer died at the age of 70, sev…
"Is This A Room" stages the verbatim transcript of the FBI interrogation of a 25-year-old former Air Force linguist with the improbable name of Reality Winner, who was eventually sente…
David Henry Hwang was attacked by an unknown assailant with a knife and nearly died. That experience, along with the playwright's shock at the results of the 2016 Presidential election and h…
There are many cues to what's wrong with this overly broad third Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' dated play, starring Marisa Tomei as Serafina Delle Rose, a Sicilian immigrant seamst…
There are many cues to what's wrong with this overly broad third Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' dated play, starring Marisa Tomei as Serafina Delle Rose, a Sicilian immigrant seamst…
Books about Bob Fosse and Yiddish theater have been named the best theater books of the year by The Theatre Library Association,  which is presenting its TLA Book Awards tonight at the…
Oscar, a fat freshman in thick bifocals meeting his college roommate for the first time, greets him with what sounds like an insult: "Hail, dog of God!" His new roommate, the street-smart Yu…
The announcement of the latest very unscientific results from the nightly poll conducted in the lobby of Lincoln Center, is a marketing gimmick for "The Great Society" that strikes me as at …
In "The Thanksgiving Play," a satire by Larissa FastHorse that debuted at Playwrights Horizons last year and has become one of the most produced plays throughout the country, Jaxton, the wok…
On Thursday night,  CNN held an "LGBTQ Town Hall" in which nine of the Democratic candidates for President separately answered questions on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender an…
I first saw Slave Play Off-Broadway, long before Rihanna made headlines for texting during the show (playwright Jeremy O. Harris publicly defended her; he was the one she was texting); and s…
When I saw "Slave Play" Off-Broadway last December, it felt like the work of a novice playwright " promising, provocative, and well produced, but too derivative, too long, too full of ide…
