OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

Dan LeFranc's RANCHO VIEJO, now receiving its world premiere in a handsome Playwrights Horizons production featuring a terrific cast, is one of those three-hour long plays that may find you tempted to flip through your program at any time for a clue as to what the heck is going on....

As audience members enter the Minetta Lane Theatre's auditorium for producer/director Luke Comer's abstract multi-media theatre piece THE PORTAL, they're greeted by a projected slide summarizing the 90 minute long production's plot, followed by the advisory, 'The show is less literal and more allego...

The Long Island Rail Road doesn't have a station in Levittown, so the central character of Richard Greenberg's clever, sentimental and occasionally steamy drama travels the play's namesake, THE BABYLON LINE, to nearby Wantagh, in order to arrive at his weekly gig teaching creative writing to adults,...

It's holiday magic for all. Now through December 18th, The Theatre at Madison Square Garden is presenting a delightful production that is guaranteed to please children and adults alike, 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Musical.'...

For a musical about the accidental death of six teenagers and a contest to select just one of them to return to life, Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond's Ride the Cyclone, mounted by MCC after development in Canadian cabarets and a successful Chicago run, is curiously lacking in any kind of emotion ...

'The City that Cried Wolf' is onstage at 59E59 Theaters through December 11th. Written by Brooks Reeves and directed by Leta Tremblay, this is the one to see.You'll laugh out loud at this fun and fascinating show that puts a grown-up spin on fairy tales and nursery rhymes....

While Debra Barsha and Hollye Levin's A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME isn't the first musical to contrast the accepted female gender roles of the 1950s with the liberated revolution of the 1960s (Off-Broadway's second visit from THE MARVELOUS WONDERETTES is still running at the Kirk.) the York's fun and f...

Gideon Irving is an original. One-man (or woman) shows are by definition personal, but even by the yardstick of solo performance, MY NAME IS GIDEON, I'M PROBABLY GOING TO DIE EVENTUALLY is unlike anything I've seen in theater or cabaret. The 30-year-old actor born at Roosevelt Hospital on 58th Stree...

As with their Vineyard Theatre success of five years ago, THE LYONS, in THIS DAY FORWARD, the team of playwright Nicky Silver and director Mark Brokaw display an impressive talent for packaging complex family drama as hip, off-beat comedy before getting to the guts of the long-term effects of dysfun...

Ever since it opened in 1966 as the Broadway production that made the Palace Theatre go legit, the final scene of Neil Simon (book), Dorothy Fields (lyrics) and Cy Coleman's (music) hyper-swinging Sweet Charity has been a trouble spot....

While the work of director John Doyle has been a frequent presence at Classic Stage Company for the past few years, his tenure as the company's artistic director gets off to an impressive start this season with a crisp and engaging world premiere production of Tom Schulman's DEAD POETS SOCIETY....

Poison brings two people together in a cemetery to discuss the desecration and movement of their son's grave, as part of the cemetery's plan to expand. In a style that is incredibly that of Waiting for Godot, this divorced couple comes together and must wait for the person who will come speak to the...

Area audiences should treasure the opportunity to see 'Terms of Endearment' starring Molly Ringwald and Hannah Dunne now at 59E59 Theaters through Sunday, December 11th....

To say that The Q Brothers put a new spin on OTHELLO might be too obvious a pun, but their fun and lively hip-hop retelling of Shakespeare's tragedy of racism and revenge, Othello: The Remix not only sets the Elizabeth characters to rap rhythms, but switches the whole story around to the present-day...

The term 'generation gap' first came into use during the 1960s, when sociologists and trend-watchers began noting the extreme differences in lifestyle, politics, fashion, music and language between the American parents who fought the Axis in World War II and the Baby Boom teenagers they raised....

The symbolic nature of Suzan-Lori Parks' 1990 free-form dramatic riff, THE DEATH OF THE LAST BLACK MAN IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD AKA THE NEGRO BOOK OF THE DEAD is made apparent to viewers as soon as they open their programs and see the characters have names like 'Black Woman With Fried Drumstick,' '...

It can be safely assumed that the majority of playgoers filing into The Public's LuEsther Theater for the 7:30 opening night performance of author/director Richard Nelson's Women Of a Certain Age on Tuesday night took their seats expecting to see Hillary Clinton declared the President-Elect of The U...

The subject of sensitive, well-intentioned white people growing up unaware of their own privilege has been receiving more and more attention in American, but back in 1982, South African playwright Athol Fugard approached the issue as experienced in his apartheid-infested homeland....

The doorway to the neighborhood bar designed with great detail by John Lee Beatty for director Kate Whoriskey's tense and finely-acted mounting of Lynn Nottage's hard-hitting new drama, Sweat, is decorated with a neon light advertising Yuengling Beer, the Pennsylvania brew that dates back to 1829....

In BLACKTOP HIGHWAY, Performance Artist John Fleck Muses on Simulacra, Animals (Live and Dead), and Trump. Taking on ten characters and mimicking as many animal sounds, the NEA 4 artist weaves a multi-media tale of horror that manages, incredibly, to make us laugh....

See 'The Collector' now onstage at 59E59 Theaters through November 13th. This riveting dark drama is written by playwright, Mark Healy based on the 1963 novel by the same name by John Fowles. It is directed by Lisa Milinazzo and stars Matt De Rogatis and Jillian Guerts....

Placed throughout Anna Deavere Smith's revealing new theatre piece, NOTES FROM THE FIELD, are violent video clips that have become all too familiar to any American with access to YouTube....

Playwright Qui Nguyen is a tricky fellow. First he has an actor appear on stage, claiming to be him, welcoming the audience with the usual pre-show ritual about turning off cell phones and warning against any form of recording....

In Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 1985 Pulitzer Prize winning musical SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, the 'art of making art' can be less about applying paint to a canvas as it is about applying a signature to a check....

The tensest, most dramatic moments in director Anne Kauffman's premiere production of Adam Bock's A Life occur whenever designer Laura Jellinek's large unit set slowly rotates horizontally, like a rotisserie, to change locations. The loud extended creaking that accompanies every change sounds like s...