For the better part of the present decade, playwright/director Richard Nelson has been going seriously Chekhovian, first with a quartet of plays set during the Obama years in the Rhinebeck, New York home of a family named Apple and then with a trio of visits during the 2016 presidential campaign wit... (more...)
The NYC premiere of 'Agnes,' written by Catya McMullen and directed by Jenna Worsham is being performed at 59E59 Theaters through September 29. It is a riveting portrayal of five individuals with with very different personalities and how they deal with their interactions and commitments. Performed i... (more...)
Eat your heart out, THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE. Paul Weiss' 1963 historical drama, better known as MARAT/SADE, now hands over the crown for play with the longest title to moun... (more...)
The New York City premiere of 'Separate and Equal,' written and directed by Seth Panitch, is now enthralling its audiences at 59E59 Theaters. The show is a stunning portrayal of race relations told through a combination of storytelling, basketball play, and contemporary dance performed to an origina... (more...)
There are times in musical theatre when a talented cast performing their hearts out can make questionable material not only endurable, but even somewhat enjoyable. Sadly, this is not the case with R.R.R.E.D., which, while given a game try by a quartet of enthusiastic belters displaying ample showbiz... (more...)
Perhaps if Clifford Odets' landmark pro-union drama, WAITING FOR LEFTY, hadn't opened the year before, Lillian Hellman's 1936 labor drama, DAYS TO COME, the sophomore Broadway effort of the playwright who made a huge name for herself two years earlier with THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, might have been better... (more...)
The stage is quite empty, save for a makeshift throne in a corner and a couple of rows of ordinary looking chairs in the back, where actors not involved with scenes sit. The costumes are contemporary clothes, mostly black, with the occasional embellishment to suggest the 15th Century setting. When a... (more...)
It may not have the romantic sweep of 'Some Enchanted Evening' or the driving intensity of 'Don't Rain On My Parade,' but so far, the best new theatre song of this young season is a finely-crafted emotional shut-down carrying the unlikely title 'Michael In The Bathroom.'... (more...)
Back in the days, really not very long ago, when self-effacing gags about failed diets were one of the few topics of discussion deemed acceptable for women in comedy, the punchline Renee Taylor uses after telling about the time when she ate nothing but meatballs every day because it was the diet tha... (more...)
It's the summer theater event that many of us wait for at 59E59 Theaters. Produced by Throughline Artists, Summer Shorts 2018 Festival of New American Short Plays presents three different short plays performed in one program. With Series A and Series B is now happening, you can get your tickets for ... (more...)
One of the most exciting and important voices to emerge from the 1980s-90s American performance art movement, Karen Finley might be regarded as one of the country's most noted censored artists.... (more...)
The late afternoon and early evening rain that had been steadily falling last Friday didn't stop the faithful from arriving at Central Park's Delacorte Theater for Shakespeare In The Park's return of the Public Works' 2016 musical version of TWELFTH NIGHT.... (more...)
'I sound like Borat and I look like Seinfeld,' jokes the Russian-accented illusionist Vitaly Beckman, who indeed sports a resemblance to 9th Avenue's most famous diner patron.... (more...)
Coming in at the heels of landmark musicals like AIN'T SUPPOSED TO DIE A NATURAL DEATH and INNER CITY, composer/lyricist Micki Grant's DON'T BOTHER ME, I CAN'T COPE was an important part of the early 1970s surge of Broadway musicals that were not only about African-American experiences but were writ... (more...)
MACBETH seems to be one of the most abused pieces from Williams Shakespeare's canon; yet, when a production does the show justice, it is incredibly spellbinding. Luckily for fans of the play and art of theatre in general, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more robustly magnificent production of the c... (more...)
When the smash hit revue SMOKEY JOE'S CAFE, celebrating the pop classics of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, opened on Broadway in 1995, director Jerry Zaks staged each beloved number with snazzy show-biz slickness and glitz, suggesting the ways they might have been performed by the artists who introd... (more...)
The NYC premiere of 'The Originalist,' written by John Strand and directed by Molly Smith, is now on stage at 59E59 theaters. This is a vital story for our times. It contrasts political and social perspectives while still proving that people can maintain a sense of civility. This enthralling theatri... (more...)
'If life were only moments, then you'd never know you had one,' sings a character from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's INTO THE WOODS while pondering whether the intimate encounter she just experienced would turn out to be of lifelong meaning or just a barely significant distraction.... (more...)
It's a classically-styled cinematic pose. The kind that tends to define a certain era of film noir. A woman stands alone on the Coney Island boardwalk on a chilly day. Covered in a tan trench coat, belt tied at the waist, she stares out at the ocean. After a few moments, emotions sweep over her and ... (more...)
The person seated in the back of the orchestra section on opening night of the Encores! Off-Center concert mounting of GONE MISSING, who was loudly sobbing during the closing song, was by no means causing a disturbance. In fact, the choked-up moans of heartbreak being emitted throughout New York Cit... (more...)
'Now that the winter formal gives way to glorious spring fling,' recites our antihero at the outset of Mike Lew's enormously clever contemporary riff on Shakespeare's RICHARD III, titled Teenage Dick, 'we find our rocks for brains hero Eddie - the quarterback - sleeping through his job as junior cla... (more...)
This is not shaping up to be a good year for Oscar Hammerstein II, American musical theatre's most important writer, who spent the first half of the 20th Century not only making significant strides to convert the genre from loosely assembled entertainments into respected and influential pieces of dr... (more...)
'We're all fully interested in navigating this brave new world with them,' says an exasperated character in Jordan Harrison's comedy of social politics, Log Cabin, 'but it sometimes seems like they want us to get it wrong... Like they're filling a quota of perceived transgressions.'... (more...)
Jason Robert Brown was just 25 years old when his SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD took the stage of Off-Broadway's intimate WPA Theatre. As he played piano and led the handful of musicians in director Daisy Prince's production, a quartet of actors who all had big things ahead of them (Brooks Ashmanskas, Andre... (more...)
Perhaps some of the good people at Britain's Royal Court are in need of a hug these days. This week New York playgoers welcomed two transfers of exceedingly violent productions from that celebrated London theatre. But while, over at The Public, the bloody finish of David Ireland's CYPRUS AVENUE is... (more...)
BWW Review: Richard Nelson Gives UNCLE VANYA The Rhinebeck Treatment
BWW Review: AGNES at 59E59 Theaters is an Excellent Story About Human Connections
BWW Review: Jen Silverman's Weird and Wonderful COLLECTIVE RAGE
BWW Review: SEPARATE AND EQUAL at 59E59 Theaters is a Stunning and Unique Portrayal of Racial Prejudice
BWW Review: R.R.R.E.D. Warns of Genetic Extinction of Redheads
BWW Review: The Mint Revives Lillian Hellman's Intriguing Labor Drama DAYS TO COME
BWW Review: Austin Pendleton Creates a Shakespearean Combo in WARS OF THE ROSES: HENRY VI & RICHARD III
BWW Review: Joe Iconis and Joe Tracz's Hard-Rocking, Super-Charged and Very Well Written BE MORE CHILL
BWW Review: Renee Taylor's MY LIFE ON A DIET Is a Comedy Feast
BWW Review: SUMMER SHORTS 2018 at 59E59 Theaters Brings Audiences a Top Variety of Shows
BWW Review: Karen Finley's Defiant GRABBING PUSSY Attacks Patriarchal Sexual Oppression
BWW Review: Public Works' Joyous Musical TWELFTH NIGHT Returns To The Delacorte
BWW Review: Illusionist Vitaly Beckman Dazzles and Charms in VITALY: AN EVENING OF WONDERS
BWW Review: Savion Glover Directs/Choreographs Micki Grant's Landmark DON'T BOTHER ME, I CAN'T COPE
BWW Review: NINAGAWA MACBETH at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival is Lush, Opulent & Masterful
BWW Review: Joshua Bergasse Creates a Sensational New Style For the Leiber and Stoller Smash SMOKEY JOE'S CAFE
BWW Review: THE ORIGINALIST at 59E59 Theaters Must Be Seen and Appreciated
BWW Review: Tracy Letts' MARY PAGE MARLOWE Offers Random Moments That Add Up To A Life
BWW Review: Rebecca Naomi Jones is Terrifically Engaging in Rinne Groff's Coney Island Excursion, FIRE IN DREAMLAND
BWW Review: The Late Michael Friedman's GONE MISSING Evokes an Emotional Response From Encores! Off-Center Audience
BWW Review: High School Machiavellian With Cerebral Palsy Claws His Way To Power in Michael Lew's Shakespeare Riff TEENAGE DICK
BWW Review: Anika Noni Rose is Captivating , But John Doyle Heavily Edits Oscar Hammerstein's CARMEN JONES
BWW Review: Jesse Tyler Ferguson As A Gay Man Facing His Own Privilege in Jordan Harrison's LOG CABIN
BWW Review: SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD Reveals The Remarkable Artistic Maturity of a Young Jason Robert Brown
BWW Review: Carey Mulligan Considers Violence and Gender in Dennis Kelly's GIRLS & BOYS
