Articles by Victor Gluck, Editor-in-Chief

About Victor Gluck, Editor-in-Chief (997 Articles)

Victor Gluck was a drama critic and arts journalist with Back Stage from 1980 – 2006. He started reviewing for TheaterScene.net in 2006, where he was also Associate Editor from 2011-2013, and has been Editor-in-Chief since 2014. He is a voting member of The Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle, the American Theatre Critics Association, and the Dramatists Guild of America. His plays have been performed at the Quaigh Theatre, Ryan Repertory Company, St. Clements Church, Nuyorican Poets Café and The Gene Frankel Playwrights/Directors Lab.

Inspired by True Events

July 22, 2024

Actor Ryan Spahn’s first play "Inspired by True Events" at the new Theatre 145 (formerly the Ohio Space) is a professional, skillful production. Unfortunately, as a backstage thriller it leaves something to be desired. The first shock does not occur until two-thirds of the way through, making most of the play a simple waiting game for something to happen. What the playwright needs is to study classic stage thrillers like Emlyn Williams’ "Night Must Fall" and Frederick Knott’s "Wait Until Dark" to learn how suspense is built into this genre. [more]

La Viuda (The Widow)

July 21, 2024

María Irene Fornés’ rediscovered "La Viuda" is a valuable addition to her better known canon. It is a challenging play in that it is basically an 80-minute monologue with other characters in flashback occasionally interrupting Angela’s narration. Director Olga Sanchez Saltveit makes a fine case for this play with a spirited and lively production but she has not solved all of the play’s inherent problems. Performed in repertory with Sam Collier’s "A Hundred Circling Camps," "La Viuda' is a worthy part of Dogteam Theatre Project’s inaugural season. [more]

Empire

July 16, 2024

In "Empire," Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull attempt to tell a very big story but are unable to bring this unwieldy tale into suitable shape. The time traveling framework is both unnecessary and obtrusive. Both the historic characters and the fictional ones are underwritten and there are too many names to keep straight. While the music is catchy, the lyrics are often too unsophisticated and repetitious to make their mark. The cluttered setting and the busy staging don’t help to tell the story. "Empire" is an ambitious but unsuccessful musical which is defeated by its very form. [more]

N/A

July 4, 2024

Correa who for many years worked for Congresswoman Constance A. Morella knows his way around government and his characters are very convincing. The casting of Diane Paulus’ production is superb and Taylor and Villafañe make excellent sparring partners. The encounters which take place mainly in N’s congressional office that of first Minority Leader and then later Speaker of the House (the same set by Myung Hee Cho) include fast-paced repartee, quips, retorts and wordplay, all worth listening to. You are required to listen intently as the dialogue is fast paced and rapid fire. When we meet them A has just won her first primary in the Bronx and Queens, defeating the Democratic Party candidate that N has supported. In the course of the five scenes of the play, we next meet them when N needs A’s vote to regain the Speakership, while the last scene takes place four years later when the Republicans have regained the House and N is packing up her office, having stepped down from her position as party leader. [more]

Ella the Ungovernable

June 26, 2024

David McDonald has discovered onto an obscure and interesting story: 15-year-old Ella Fitzgerald’s incarceration in the New York Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York, after her mother was killed crossing the street, and her miraculous escape from it. While little is known of her life during this period, McDonald calls his play "Ella the Ungovernable" “speculative fiction.” As co-directed by actress Michele Baldwin (who plays Ella’s mother Tempie, short for Temperance) and the playwright, the play feels a bit long without an intermission. [more]

The Welkin

June 24, 2024

It is the first year that Haley’s comet has been predicted. Sally Poppy, trapped in a loveless marriage at age 21, has committed a murder with her lover of a child from a rich family she has worked for. She has been sentenced to death by hanging and then to be anatomized (you really don’t want to know). However, she has declared she is with child. If it is true, she will be deported to America after the child is born. But is it true? Twelve local matrons have convened in an unheated upper room of the courthouse to decide on the truth of her statement, from women who know her to be a liar, to those who pity her hard life, from older women with many children, to young ones about to have their first child, from a gentlewoman down to a simple farmer’s wife. The central character is Elizabeth Luke (played by film and television star Sandra Oh), the local midwife who does not wish to see injustice occur. She has brought Sally into the world but though she doesn’t know her since, she feels that the all-male court has not given her a fair chance. On the opposite side is Mrs. Charlotte Cary, a colonel’s widow who is convinced from private knowledge that Sally is a bad one and could be guilty of any crime. [more]

Tomorrow We Love

June 18, 2024

The play is framed, movie style, by a trial of the leading character, so that the bulk of the play becomes a flashback to what led up to it. However, the show which is occasionally amusing is too dependent on name dropping and 1950’s references: "Leave It To Beaver," "Dragnet," Sputnik, Charles Atlas, Jack LaLanne, Flannery O’Connor, James Bond, Geritol, Jane Wyman, Henny Youngman, "Valley of the Dolls," Jack Kerouac, and quotes from "Damn Yankees," "South Pacific" and "A Star is Born." While the sound design by Morry Campbell is often witty with snatches of the themes from "Written the Wind," "A Summer Place," "West Side Story" and Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, much of the exaggeration is too farfetched without being remotely believable: Farley refers to his ex-wife Lena Horne and claims to have been brought up at The White House by President Calvin Coolidge and his wife. [more]

David, A New Musical

June 14, 2024

"David" now at the AMT Theater is an ambitious Off Broadway musical dramatizing the story of the youth of the hero David, later second king of Israel. It has a bouncy contemporary score by Albert Tapper and a large talented cast. Somewhat indebted to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Biblical musicals, it is narrated by the older King David on his deathbed to the Prophet Nathan. Most of David’s adventurous exploits take place off stage, while the dramatized scenes are mainly political and dramatic. [more]

Lyrics & Lyricists Series: “Wonder of Wonders: Celebrating Sheldon Harnick”

June 7, 2024

While most of the songs presented were standards, there were some oddities and curiosities like five cuts songs, one song from a Ford Motor Company industrial show by Bock and Harnick, and two songs Harnick wrote with others, one to his own lyrics. Sperling himself sang three of the five cuts song, starting with Amalia’s song of anxiety before her date with “Dear Friend” pen pal for the unashamedly romantic "She Love Me," “Tell Me I Look Nice,” replaced by the more powerful “Will He Like Me?” (created by Barbara Cook, and sung here by Zavelson). [more]

Breaking the Story

June 6, 2024

The dialogue is smart and sophisticated. The author’s unfocused theme seems to be the conflict between Marina and Nikki as to journalistic ethics. Marina believes in reporting the story whatever it is and let the audience decide. Nikki only reports on people and stories she can champion not wanting to give an outlet to evil-minded people. (There is something to be said for both points of view.) However, Scheer doesn’t take this argument very far and drops it quickly each time the two reporters clash without a resolution. The playwright also flirts with the idea that the danger of her work is adrenaline for Marina who couldn’t live without it, rather than just obtaining and breaking the story. Aside from the obvious meaning of the title, Nikki wants to name her podcast on Marina “Breaking the Story: The Life of Marina Reyes.” [more]

The Opposite of Love

June 3, 2024

Ashley Griffin’s "The Opposite of Love" is not afraid to tackle questions of sex, intimacy, abuse and suicide. It does so with great sensitivity and delicacy. It is as though the author does not want to frighten off those who have similar problems. However, it is this very timidity that makes the play feel so tame, as though not only are the actors awkward around each other but the author is too coy with her material. However, the actors and the direction always hold our attention even when the subtext is left to the audience. [more]

All of Me

May 24, 2024

Laura Winters’ "All of Me" is a lively rom-com of rich boy meets poor girl much on the lines of 1930’s film comedies. However, the new wrinkle here is that Lucy is disabled using a motorized scooter and a text-to-speech Augmentative and Alternative Communication device to speak, while Alfonso uses a motorized wheelchair and also uses an AAC device to speak as well. Both are independent people though Lucy needs a great deal of help while Alfonso’s wealth gives him staff to take care of his needs. They would seem a perfect fit for each other except that their mothers don’t think so. Ashley Brooke Monroe’s production is spirited and animated. What she cannot overcome in the smart and nimble dialogue is the delay in the response time using AAC devices so that there is an unavoidable pause between the responses in the repartee. Another problem is that though the main characters are played engagingly by Madison Ferris and Danny J. Gomez, the rest of Lucy’s dysfunctional family seems clichéd and familiar. [more]

A Groundbreaking Achievement of Outrageous Importance That People Scroll By, Barely Impacted

May 23, 2024

Playwright Jake Shore has something serious on his mind but his scatter-shot take on Artificial Intelligence does not make the case. The repetitious dialogue and events only undercut the intended satire. The attempts at humor like “You just make sure to tell the cell phone you’re dating that I’m excited to meet her,” “Love is like … a charcuterie board. All different types of pretzels and cheeses … and crackers,” and “I think I want to triple major in English, Math and Non-human Biologics” are neither funny nor absurd enough to count as satire. The acting and directing style fail to elevate all this to a level of farce or lampoonery. There is a very important play to be written about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence but this isn’t it. [more]

Just Another Day

May 20, 2024

Dan Lauria’s "Just Another Day" is quite leisurely in its delivery but Lauria and McCormack inhabit their roles. While the play could use some pruning, it is a charming portrait of two elderly people drifting into an age when they cannot count on their memories but know that there is something important they wish to recall. Their hidden backstories and their changing recollections at times make this play like a mystery as well as a comedy. "Just Another Day" is a tribute to those people old enough to know that their pasts are slipping away unless they can pin them down. [more]

The Actors

May 20, 2024

Ronnie Larsen, Allen Lewis Rickman and Jeni Hacker in a scene from Larsen’s “The Actors” at [more]

The Wiz

May 16, 2024

The eye-filling sets by Hannah Beachler and video and projection design by Daniel Brodie include subtle tributes to Black Culture that not all theatergoers may notice on a first look. When Dorothy first lands in Oz, the landscape and houses are reminiscent of Tremé, the Black neighborhood in New Orleans decimated by Hurricane Katrina. The overhead set piece is inspired by the arch in New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong Park as well as incorporating patterns found in quilts on the Underground Railroad. African symbols are carved into the bark of the trees along Dorothy’s path on the Yellow Brick Road as well as depicted on the sides of the theater proscenium arch. When Glinda enters, she comes out of house at the address 1804, commemorating the year of Haiti’s independence. The red and black sets and costumes (by Sharon Davis) for the sequence in the Castle of Evilene are a tribute to West African culture. [more]

Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club

May 13, 2024

The lead of the show is film star Eddie Redmayne, who won the Olivier Award for his performance as the Emcee in the London production and is also Tony nominated for this show. Director Rebecca Frecknall’s staging (with her British production team) is imaginative and innovative, quite unlike any Cabaret you have seen before. The new Sally Bowles is Scottish American actress Gayle Rankin who appeared as Fraulein Kost on Broadway in Sam Mendes’ 2014 Broadway revival of "Cabaret" which appeared at Studio 54. Frecknall’s interpretation is more dissolute and dissipated than most versions so that when American writer Clifford Bradshaw arrives in Berlin to get material for a novel the city is already deep in the throes of degradation and degeneracy when he meets second-rate singer Sally Bowles as the party girl par excellence and lead female singer of the Kit Kat Club. [more]

Jordans

May 12, 2024

In fact, the play which ought to be hilarious is almost devoid of jokes as the premise which is politically incorrect will make many white playgoers uncomfortable – unless this is the point of the play. As the setting is an event space/rental studio/production facility, we see a trendy photo shoot of a high fashion model, a taping of a motivational speaker, and a business meeting to plan a new advertising campaign for a rapper’s new product line, a pop star whose street cred is that he is on trial for aggravated assault and has been to jail a few times for drugs and theft. All of this is pushed to the limit which undercuts its humorous possibilities. Of course, there are the obvious jokes about Michael Jordan and wearing Jordan jeans. [more]

I Ought to Be In Pictures

May 9, 2024

Director Nicholas Viselli has done well with the characterizations but is unable to resolve the thinness of the backstories which are not fleshed out by the script. The shallow set which has most of its furniture and appliances lined up across the stage makes some of the blocking awkward and repetitious. Making her Off Broadway debut as Libby in the role that won Dinah Manhoff the Tony Award, Makenzie Morgan Gomez is spunky and quick with the retort. She has a breezy, wise stage presence. Her use of a wheelchair and a cane is no problem to the character but when she says that she has hiked and hitched her way across half of America one wonders if this is realistic. And today in 2024 do 19-year-old women risk hitching alone that distance? [more]

La Musica Deuxième

May 8, 2024

Jessica Burr’s Blessed Unrest production of Marguerite Duras’ "La Musica Deuxième" in the 1992 translation by Barbara Bray is like a violent Jean Paul Sartre short story directed in the cool style of filmmaker Éric Rohmer. Whether this is best for the material, you will have to decide for yourself. Aside from the 2023 film of Duras’ play Suzanna Andler, this is the first New York presentation of one of her plays since Savannah Bay at the Classic Stage Company in 2003. [more]

Hell’s Kitchen on Broadway

May 3, 2024

The new musical "Hell’s Kitchen" has made a successful transition to Broadway from The Public Theater and the new version seems to have corrected some of the flaws from before. This juke-box musical with a score by singer/songwriter Alicia Keys and a book by playwright Kristoffer Diaz (The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity), is a big ambitious show, a love letter to New York, and inspired by the coming of age story of Keys’ 17th year. It is no longer over-miked by sound designer Gareth Owen, characters seemed to have deepened, the plot seems to have gelled into a distinct coming of age story, and the redesigned set by Robert Brill has moved much of the action closer to the audience. It is a crowd pleaser with the iconic Keys’ songs “Girl on Fire,” “Fallin’” and “Empire State of Mind.” Excitingly performed by its cast made up of a handful of characters and a large ensemble of 15 singer/dancers, its most famous leads Shoshana Bean and Brandon Victor Dixon as Ali’s parents are given less to do as this is the daughter’s story. In the leading role of 17-year-old Ali, making their professional Broadway debut, is Maleah Joi Moon who proves to be an exciting musical personality who can hold a show such as this together. [more]

Uncle Vanya

May 1, 2024

Things are not helped by Mini Lien’s bland setting that looks more like a furniture showroom than the family manse held for decades and passed down to the present inhabitants. The new adaptation reduces the plot to one more dysfunctional family story while Chekhov is always more than that. Even more damaging is that the direction by Lila Neugebauer (best known for new plays by Sarah DeLappe, Zoe Kazan, Kenneth Lonergan, Brandon Jacobs Jenkins, Tracy Letts and Annie Baker) has staged the play so that it is in isolated conversations, one that should be called Scenes from the Life of Uncle Vanya. The lighting design by Lap Chi Chu and Elizabeth Harper highlights this by isolating various characters with light changes. Kay Voyce's costumes, except for the surprising brightly caftans of the grandmother, are characterless and monochromatic. [more]

Sally & Tom

April 29, 2024

In the very first scene it becomes apparent that we are watching "The Pursuit of Happiness," a new play from the Good Company, an indie theater group that has been known for radical and experimental work that no one came to see but now wants to reach a wider audience and find a producer who will foot the bill. African American playwright Luce is in an unmarried relationship with her director and costar Mike, similar to that of Sally and Tom whom they are playing, and just like Sally Hemings who bore Jefferson six children, Luce discovers that she is pregnant. The play alternates between scenes backstage among the actors in their dressing rooms and onstage as they rehearse the play with opening night only two days away, making changes as they go along. [more]

Scarlett Dreams

April 26, 2024

A good deal of fun is had by Brian Pacelli’s projection design which is shown on the modern and chic living room/dining room set by Christopher and Justin Swader. It takes us to the virtual reality world inhabited by Scarlett and later Kevin: forests, deserts, jungles, icescapes which change at the drop of a hat. It also lets us keep track of Kevin’s progress with fitness data and the success of the RealFit apps as to the number of new users. Emily Rebholz has created an attractive collection of clothes in monochromatic colors for these fitness-oriented people. The lighting by Jamie Roderick enhances the set and projections by changing the mood each time we find we are projected somewhere else. [more]

Macbeth (an undoing)

April 22, 2024

In attempting to make a feminist statement out of Shakespeare’s "Macbeth", Harris has made Lady Macbeth into the same murderous monster that her husband became in the original. This does not seem to further the feminist cause that if women were in power they would do things differently. Lady Macbeth’s treatment of Lady Macduff (kidnapping her back from her home, attempting to take her child away, etc.) makes her almost worse than Shakespeare’s protagonist. Having eliminated most of the scenes outside of the Macbeth Castle, the second half seems both long and repetitious as things get worse and worse for the new queen. The famous “Tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy is rather chopped up so that it does not make her sympathetic as it did Macbeth when hearing about his wife’s suicide. [more]

Lempicka

April 21, 2024

In telling the life story of Tamara de Lempicka, the show begins with a fascinating premise. Unfortunately, neither the score nor the book lives up to her high standards. Unlike "Sunday in the Park with George" which showed us the workings of the artistic process, "Lempicka" is more interested in the social aspects of the 1920’s and 1930’s Paris than in Tamara’s revolutionary paintings. The cast works hard to put over the new musical but they are defeated by commonplace situations, banal song lyrics, and over-used pronouncements. The musical of Tamara de Lempicka’s life still has to be told. [more]

Las Borinqueñas

April 15, 2024

Nelson Diaz-Marcano’s "Las Borinqueñas," the latest play in the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Science and Technology Project, has a fascinating, little known story to tell: the preliminary trials that led to the creation of the birth control pill which took place in Puerto Rico in the 1950’s up until 1960 when it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. However, the play has too many characters each with a different story and too many themes that are not fully explored. Another problem for English speakers is that much of the play is in untranslated Spanish, all of the jokes and a good deal of the back and forth between the women. One assumes that this is for authenticity but it makes the play challenging for theatergoers who don’t know Spanish. Director Rebecca Aparicio keeps the play’s events swiftly moving along but does not compensate for the script’s deficiencies or confusing attempt to convey too much information. [more]

The Reef (opera workshop)

April 13, 2024

On April 10, 2024, Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center presented a tantalizing teaser of a musical evening with the world premiere workshop of only the first act of 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis’ new opera, "The Reef." With a libretto adapted by Joan Ross Sorkin, from the 1912 novel by Edith Wharton, this was the first time that the work has been adapted for the stage, though it has been filmed as Passion’s Way. The workshop was sponsored by the Berkshire Opera Festival using a cast of emerging artists all of whom were vocally capable of singing the work. [more]

Fish

April 12, 2024

Aside from its attempt to cover too much at one time (drug addiction, pregnancy, incarceration, high school dropouts, gun violence, lack of health care, underfunded ghetto schools), "Fish" does not tell us anything we don’t already know. It will come as no surprise that public schools teach to the test, truancy is a big problem and students fall asleep in class after working jobs at night to help pay the rent, or that charter schools are better funded than public schools. Nor does it have any answers other than that teachers should be more understanding of students’ home situations and help to do something about inadequate facilities and supplies – other than pay for missing supplies themselves. [more]

Water for Elephants

April 8, 2024

Playwright/bookwriter Rick Elice has written the greatest jukebox musical (so far) in his 2005 Jersey Boys. In his adaptation of Sara Gruen’s bestselling novel Water for Elephants, he may just have written the best stage musical about circuses by making the animals as real as the human characters. The indie folk band Pigpen Theatre Co. has written a varied collection of songs, ingeniously orchestrated, that are always exciting as they both forward the story and reveal the emotions of the people who sing them. However, it is director Jessica Stone assisted with circus design by Shana Carroll who has done the most inventive and original work. [more]

The Notebook: The Musical

April 4, 2024

While the characters age, the use of diversity here has them switch races, so that while one couple has a Black Allie and a white Noah, another has a white Allie and a Black Noah, as well as Allie’s parents being played by an interracial couple. Although it is easy to follow, it is somewhat distracting until one gets used to it. The setting has also been updated from the 1940’s to the 1960’s so that Noah fights in Vietnam now rather than World War II. Brunstetter’s book is faithful to both the novel and the movie, except that while the earlier two versions were recounted by the older Noah reading to his increasingly distracted wife from the notebook that she wrote in chronological order, here there are flashbacks within flashbacks, backtracking some of the events. Brunstetter has also made the ending more explicit than either the book or the film, as well as keeping much of the original sentimentality at bay. [more]

An Enemy of the People

March 31, 2024

The concept of alternate facts was not created under the Trump Administration. In 1882 Henrik Ibsen wrote "An Enemy of the People" in which a medical report that a town’s new spa is polluted by toxic bacteria which will cause an epidemic is contradicted by financial and political interests which will be brought down by the revelation. Amy Herzog’s new American adaptation could not be timelier after the pandemic which we just underwent. This forceful and vigorous production led by television stars Jeremy Strong ("Succession"; "Masters of Sex") and Michael Imperioli ("The Sopranos"; "The White Lotus") is robustly staged by Herzog’s own husband, controversial director Sam Gold. This is a play that has been staged when needed at various times in our history such as Arthur Miller’s adaptation during the McCarthy Era. [more]

Eddie Izzard: Hamlet

March 30, 2024

In this tour de force, Izzard has come up with a different voice and stance for each character: King Claudius is a baritone, Lord Polonius has a limp, Lady Ophelia has a somewhat breathy speech pattern while Queen Gertrude is very emotional. The gravediggers are given two different lower class accents and the humor in the scene is still very vivid. The courtier Osric, who is usually played as somewhat fey, waves his hands around a great deal. The duel scene between Hamlet and Laertes in the last act is mostly successful but eventually it becomes difficult to figure out who is winning and who is losing. [more]

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