Series A of this year's Summer Shorts: 13th Festival of New American Short Plays is unified around the theme of death and dying and how it affects the living. Lest you think that this sounds…
It is not until the second act of British playwright Chris Urch's "The Rolling Stone" that the play catches fire but from then on the drama is explosive, compelling and very disturbing. Once…
The three Havel one acts, known as "The Vanek Plays," though written separately, were originally banned in Czechoslovakia and performed secretly in people's living rooms as well as being pas…
While Will T.F. Carter's "Barabbas" is very outspoken on the topic of political corruption in Peru, the play is dramatically weak as so much of it is exposition. In each scene we learn a lit…
Matthew Amendt's new play "The Comedian's Tragedy" asks the burning question why did Aristophanes, the master of Greek comedy, never write any tragedies. Socrates in Plato's "Symposium" equa…
Lydia R. Diamond's "Toni Stone" is a tour de force for one actress and Obie Award winner April Matthis gives a bravura performance as the first woman to play professional baseball as part of…
Nottage's book is faithful to the novel while at the same time reducing some of the melodrama and streamlining the story to reduce the number of characters to a cast of 13. Sheik's score may…
A mash-up of Eugene O'Neill's "Anna Christie" (set in Manhattan and off the coasts of Provincetown and Boston) and "Desire under the Elms "(with a rural New England setting), the play is set…
Although director Indhu Rubasingham's production is engrossing and entertaining, this talky and dense play may be difficult to follow for Americans who either do not know or have forgotten t…
Director Kenny Leon has made his reputation with trenchant productions of contemporary and new plays by such authors as Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, Katori Hall and Lydia R. Diamond. N…
Kate Hamill who has had success with "Sense and Sensibility" (Bedlam), "Pride and Prejudice" (Primary Stages), and "Vanity Fair "(The Pearl Theatre) has now turned her sights to Louisa May A…
Under Shinn's direction, Winstead making her stage debut is very low-key, almost as an observer in her own story. True she works as a therapist, one who tries not to reveal her personal feel…
The play offers no catharsis as the actors are so low-key throughout, all much too calm even when the stakes are rising. As a result, there is little or no tension even when we realize the p…
Bekah Brunstetter's new play, "Public Servant," has its heart in the right place. It shares with The Cake, seen earlier this year at Manhattan Theatre Club, the first part of a trilogy with …
G. Austin Allen's set is a larger-than-life closet draped in purple cloth and which also includes a kitchen. To this room comes the older man in his mid-60's who has discovered that as his h…
Schmidt's streamlined adaptation of Shakespeare's Scottish tragedy is played by a cast of seven schoolgirls who meet in an abandoned urban field after school without any set up other than th…
"Luzia: A Waking Dream of Mexico" is Cirque du Soleil's 38th original production and its 18th performed under The Big Top. The name is a combination of the Spanish word for light (luz) and t…
As David, Chris Dwan does not make one forget the inimitable Grisetti who spun every moment into a comic turn. However, Dwan is charming as the undaunted hero who must deal with problems beh…
Never really losing her cool, Pressley always commands the stage even though scenic designer Alexis Distler has made it difficult by creating a huge private room, beautiful in its understate…
Not all cult movies need to be made into musicals, particularly those that are dependent on special effects which the cinema does better than the stage. This is demonstrated by the new Broad…
Poet Aziza Barnes' first play, "BLKS," now at MCC Theater Space is raucous, vulgar, outrageous and contemporary in Robert O'Hara's hilarious, over-the-top production. Following the adventure…
Christopher Chen's exquisite and mystical "Passage" being produced by the Soho Rep is inspired by E.M. Forster's "A Passage to India," borrowing its plot and character relationships. But whi…
Witnessing the LOTNY production makes one wonder why "Owen Wingrave" is not performed more often: it has a small cast of eight with juicy roles for all of the characters, evenly divided betw…
As president of International PEN, the worldwide association of writers, from 1966 " 1969, playwright Arthur Miller moved about Eastern Europe freely and witnessed a great many troubling eve…
In "Caroline's Kitchen," British playwright Torben Betts ("Invincible," "The Unconquered," "Muswell Hill") has written a state of the nation farce which has no laughs. As the play under the …