Michael Dale - Page 46

To say that there are no dramatic highs and lows in Amy Herzog's touching new drama, Mary Jane, is by no means a criticism. It's more of a recognition of the beautifully understated naturalism in both the playwright's text and in director Anne Kauffman's production.

The beloved and classic premise of an idealistic teacher determined to reach out and help a classroom full of troubled and disrespectful students ('Up The Down Staircase,' 'To Sir, With Love') gets a fresh and surprising variation in Philip Dawkins' terrific new comedy/drama, Charm.

While Suzan-Lori Parks' ferocious drama from 2000, FUCKING A, enjoys an excellent new production at Signature Theatre, across the lobby of their multi-stage center, her more sensitive 1999 exploration, IN THE BLOOD, also receives a solid remounting.

It wasn't long after Mary Martin took her first Broadway flight as Peter Pan that Ann, the central character of Sarah Ruhl's sometimes-whimsical/sometimes-philosophical new drama took her own crack at the role as a 10-year-old.

For over forty years, the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players have been Gotham's go-to company for high-quality G&S productions produced with full choruses and orchestras in the traditional D'Oyly Carte style.

British playwright Simon Stephens scored big his first time on Broadway, taking the 2015 Best Play Tony Award for THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME two years after receiving the same honor at the Olivier Awards.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter' may have served as the initial inspiration for Suzan-Lori Parks' ferocious 2000 drama, FUCKING A, but, especially in director Jo Bonney's chilling Signature Theatre production, her sardonically abstract portrait of human cruelty may remind playgoers of another writer, Bertolt Brecht.

'All the world's a stage / And everybody's in the show. / Nobody's a pro.' Those words, sung at the opening of Shaina Taub and Laurie Woolery's thoroughly enchanting musical adaptation of Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT, were especially poignant at the Delacorte Theater this past weekend, where, since 2013, every Labor Day holiday has been celebrated with a production by the Public Theater's gloriously inclusive Public Works program.

Snuggled at the curve of a quiet little Greenwich Village side street, the quaint and historic Cherry Lane Theatre is a perfect spot to engage in a quiet little drama.

While the underrepresentation of women playwrights in contemporary American theatre remains an important issue, the Mint Theater Company, those invaluable specialists in rediscovering interesting obscurities from authors who are no longer with us, continue their practice of highlighting their seasons with contributions from a rich theatrical legacy of nearly forgotten women writers of the past.

Harold Prince, who has been honored with 21 Tony Awards for his seven decades of achievements as a Broadway producer and director, did not write one word nor compose one note of the 17 musicals represented in the enrapturing new revue that bears his name.

It doesn't take long before Nancy Opel starts tearing your heart out as the title character of the new musical, Curvy Widow.

'If you knew in advance exactly what was going to happen in your life, and how everything was going to turn out, and if you knew you couldn't do anything to change it, would you still want to go on with your life?'

When this reviewer first critiqued Lucas Hnath's clever and intriguing A DOLL'S HOUSE, PART 2, he envisioned much discussion being provoked over the fact that a new Broadway play that debates issues regarding a woman's fight against institutionalized sexism was written and directed by men.

After Florenz Ziegfeld spent the early decades of Broadway's 20th Century 'glorifying the American Girl,' a young composer/lyricist named Jerry Herman spent a good hunk of the second half showcasing extraordinary women.

Red, white and blue bunting is draped across a stage left box at the Belasco Theatre because, as Michael Moore explains at the beginning of his more-or-less solo Broadway performance, THE TERMS OF MY SURRENDER, it is reserved for President Donald Trump to sit in at any performance he chooses.

Given her distinguished career that includes such significant works at PAINTING CHURCHES, COASTAL DISTURBANCES and PRIDE'S CROSSING, a new play by Tina Howe is certainly a noteworthy event.

New York City wasn't exactly the most magical place for a child to grow up in back in 1975. Crime and poverty rates were inhumanely high and when the city begged for federal assistance, the president, at least according to a Daily News headline, replied 'Drop Dead.'

It was fifty years ago that The Summer of Love attracted throngs of lunatics, lovers and poets to New York's Central Park in a free-spirited embrace of life's passions and pleasures. That same spirit is now joyously celebrated in the park's Delacorte Theater, where director Lear deBessonet's luscious, lusty and laugh-out-loud funny production of Shakespeare's fantasy comedy, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM offers an evening of ravishing enchantment.

Connoisseurs of American musical theatre wishing to make a point about the genre's ability to dramatize even the most unlikely of subjects often cite examples like SWEENEY TODD's vengeful barber on a killing spree or THE PAJAMA GAME's labor/management dispute, but bookwriter/lyricist/composer Kirsten Childs may have topped them all in 2000 when Playwrights Horizons premiered THE BUBBLY BLACK GIRL SHEDS HER CHAMELEON SKIN.