The Philadelphia Theatre Company's version of The Light in the Piazza is a unique accomplishment, adapting the look of New York's spacious Lincoln Center production to a smaller stage. It's a great re-interpretation of a gentle musical about fragile people.
What is it that attracts Broadway musicals to urban poverty? Great performances can cover a multitude of sins. But with merely competent performances, like those in this production of Oliver…
Happiness is illusory and joy fleeting, but there's much melancholy beauty to be found in the first third of the late Horton Foote's nine-play Orphans' Home Cycle at Off Broadway's Signature Theatre Company.
The plotline of In the Next Room, which just opened on Broadway, is not nearly as ribald as you might expect. That restraint is almost a shame, because Ruhl's play could have benefited from a broader, farcical touch. As it stands, In the Next Room occasionally seems like a barely dramatized version of a college lecture about the treatment of women in the 19th century (both medically and otherwise). Too often, the characters seem like types, stand-ins for some period point of view, rather than flesh-and-blood individuals.
In this riveting and lyrical production, the Wilma Theater continues its long-standing role as an incubator for Athol Fugard's continuing growth in the post-apartheid era.
As its title suggests, Theresa Rebeck's pointy comedy The Understudy concerns unappreciated people. Rarely is a comedy this entertaining also so human.
Finian's Rainbow, now in gorgeous revival on Broadway, possesses all the old-fashioned charm that can make musical theater such a pleasure
Still aggravating, still shocking, still engrossing after all these years, David Mamet's Oleanna is receiving a fierce and fine revival on Broadway starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles.
Beyond an exceptional acting ensemble, in The History Boys the Arden stages a sharp intellectual prep-school drama that cuts to the core of if, how and why a society should value art, culture, education and learning.