The Bathroom Attendant
If Kelly can pare away the exposition, substantially tighten the second act, eliminate the extraneous political rhetoric, deepen the comedy through character rather than topical jokes, and g…
If Kelly can pare away the exposition, substantially tighten the second act, eliminate the extraneous political rhetoric, deepen the comedy through character rather than topical jokes, and g…
In benevolent, Sophie McIntosh turns a basement laundry room into a small theater of female confinement, where the dirty linens of respectable New York become both literal evidence and metap…
"Isla," the new musical-theater piece from Hit the Lights! Company now at WP Theater, is one of those productions in which the eye is continually rewarded while the mind is left waiting for …
At first mention, a young woman suffering a stroke does not sound like a promising premise for a comedy, much less a musical comedy. It suggests frantic texts to a medically literate friend,…
John Donnelly’s "The Pass," which arrived at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2014 and now makes its American premiere at La MaMa, is the sort of play whose subject seems almost unnerving…
George's accomplishment lies in recognizing that public catastrophes reverberate far beyond the headlines. His protagonists are not heroes in any conventional sense but three hourly employee…
Christopher Ryan directs with remarkable confidence in the material's stillness. Presented upstairs at Quick Eternity, a cocktail bar tucked into the Seaport, the production dissolves the cu…
Giovanna Yang as Despina, Lina Chung as Fiordiligi, Ricardo Diaz as Ferrando, Young Kwang Yoo as Guglielmo, Mairin Srygley as Dorabella and Nicola Ziccardi as Don Alfonso in a scene from T…
Matthew Leavitt’s "Sukkot" begins with a deceptively simple premise: a grieving widower builds a sukkah because he believes it is the closest remaining path to his late wife. From that pre…
What ultimately distinguishes this production is its refusal to flatten Shakespeare into a contemporary thesis. It neither apologizes for the play's misogyny nor sensationalizes it. Instead,…
César Alvarez's "The Potluck," directed with uncommon daring by Sarah Benson, is that increasingly rare theatrical achievement: a musical willing to risk confusion, contradiction, and forma…
A theatrical audition has always carried the faint aura of ritual: a small room, a handful of strangers vested with authority, and an actor asked to compress talent, vulnerability, and despe…
Walsh has long been fascinated by characters imprisoned within the architecture of their own memories, people condemned to relive the past not because they have forgotten it, but because the…
What emerges over time is not merely a friendship but one of the most intricate love stories currently playing in New York. Ari and Brit have been entwined since birth, neighbors in a traile…
Few musicals occupy quite the same place in the American theatrical imagination as "La Cage aux Folles." Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s 1983 landmark arrived disguised as an old-fashi…
Throughout, Rice and Roland demonstrate extraordinary command of tone. They move effortlessly from slapstick to philosophical inquiry, from broad clowning to moments of startling vulnerabili…
Helen Banner’s "In the Devil’s Hands," receiving its haunting world premiere at Zoopraxic’s newly opened Long Island City performance space, is one of those rare theatrical experiences…
For most of its running time, "Dirty Books"—a slyly seductive immersive production written and directed by Mara Lieberman for Bated Breath Theatre Company—behaves less like a play than l…
There are evenings in the theater when one feels not merely entertained but altered—mysteriously unfastened from the ordinary mechanisms of perception and delivered into some older, strang…
Visually, "Specimen" resembles the fever dream of a junk dealer raised on 1970s science fiction. We anxiously anticipate the arrival of Robot B-9 from" Lost in Space" shouting “Danger, Wil…
John, discovered as an infant in a basket outside the grand department store known as the Emporium, grows up haunted by the place’s almost metaphysical allure. Like so many Wilder protagon…
The evening’s pleasures derive less from narrative surprise than from tonal dexterity. Sindelar knows exactly how ridiculous this world is, but resists the temptation to become smug about …
Inside, "Canciones" unfolds less like a play than like an actual family gathering one has somehow wandered into midway through the evening. The house hums with side conversations, overlappin…
The title refers to the catastrophic 73 seconds between the Challenger’s launch and explosion, and Mezzocchi turns those seconds into the play’s governing existential paradox. Had Rosema…
Inspired in part by "he Magic Mountain," Thomas Mann’s 1924 meditation on illness and temporality, Zimet’s play borrows not its plot but its sensibility: the peculiar dilation and contra…