To be sure, Serafina and Alvaro's romance is less than credible, but director Trip Cullman wisely commits to it completely, recognizing that Williams really hasn't given him any other choice. Luckily for Cullman, he has the ebullient Tomei to portray Serafina and keep the audience from losing faith that the character's happy ending is just over that lovely Gulf Coast horizon, no matter what miseries she's endured. [more]
"The Cosby Show," "Home Improvement" and "Roseanne" are among Mr. Williams’ prominent credits as a television writer and producer. Williams also has had several plays produced and has directed a number of theater productions. Fear is in the venerable tradition of "The Petrified Forest" and "The Desperate Hours" with dashes of "The Bad Seed." It exhibits a technical facility for dramatic writing with its sharp dialogue delivered by its diverse well-drawn characters enmeshed in a suspenseful scenario out of French cinema. Lamentably, Williams doesn’t go all the way in rendering Fear’s classic whodunit aspects. It all plays out inconclusively and without satisfaction. [more]
The play’s dynamic—with the two brothers trying to stay in sync even as they find themselves polar opposites in nearly all areas of their lives—seems at points to make the play a kind of clunky “what if” scenario from a modern-problems textbook (the punny title doesn’t help). However, Goodwin’s talent for writing smart, occasionally amusing dialogue and for making his characters seem like real people rather than emblems largely mitigates that concern. Also, the work of the actors in this production is quite strong. [more]
Tracy Letts’ latest play to reach New York via the Chicago Steppenwolf production is the comedy drama, "Linda Vista," in which a 50-year-old white man in San Diego going through a messy divorce finds his life spiraling downward as he attempts to deal with his personal demons in a major midlife crisis. Presented in New York by Second Stage Theater, the play delineates a case of toxic masculinity and will most likely fascinate men and infuriate women. While Dick Wheeler played by Ian Barford, longtime Steppenwolf ensemble member, is reprehensible in the comic first act, he is redeemed by the end of the poignant second act where one’s sympathies finally go out to him. [more]
The performances as well as the dialogue are cool and unemotional as you might expect from four professionals used to doing their jobs, until about three quarters of the way through when Winner confesses to having mailed out the document that they have been asking her about after admitting that she had printed it out to read it. From then on for the last 15 minutes, the tension rises as it become obvious that Winner will not be allowed to go home. [more]
As is Mr. Friel’s The Faith Healer, Molly Sweeney is a monologue play. Here, instead of being separated in individual acts, the three characters appear on stage together without interacting, and speak alternately. It’s certainly a viable format and Mr. Friel gives us a gorgeous cascade of memories, biographical details, differing points of view and suspense. However, as beautiful as these reveries may be, there’s too much of them and the play’s impact is diluted. Lasting two and a half hours and comprised of two acts with an intermission, the slender plot is embellished with the leisure of a literary work rather than a taut stage play. Still, by its end, one is caught up by the characters and their fates. The arguable structural deficiencies are compensated for by the faultless presentation. [more]
Knud Adams directs this one-set show which at times has moments of humor, but overall is a slow moving and usually depressing narrative. Ari Fliakos, who plays the son, gives a reserved performance. Too often I thought of the somber tones of The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling. Fliakos speaks directly to the audience while seldom having conversations with his mother, played convincingly by Caroline Lagerfelt. When they do interact, it’s via a call that usually describes her mundane days. [more]
"Games" shines a light on the long forgotten stories of two Jewish athletes in post-World War I Germany, a Germany that slid into National Socialism by the 1930’s, effecting the lives of Helene Mayer, a world-class fencer, and Gretel Bergmann, a record-setting high jumper. The play, directed with attention to pacing and unadorned expressiveness by Darren Lee Cole (assisted by Hayley Procacci) takes the protagonists through the world-changing 1936 Berlin (aka the “Nazi”) Olympics. [more]
Written by Sean Daniels, "The White Chip" is reportedly an autobiographical play, directed with an earnest finesse by Sheryl Kaller who sometimes has difficulty keeping her three different performers in character, in terms of whom they represent. If one has difficulty following the many tangents, Kaller has to be held principally responsible for that. [more]
Bearded, bald and utilizing a pronounced Irish accent, the physically imposing Jeffrey Bean is towering as John. The beaming Mr. Bean’s delightful bonhomie gives way to harrowing anguish as he conveys John’s dark sensibility while consuming more and more whiskey, shambling about and later coping with the bender’s aftereffects. Bean’s everyman presence endows his performance with the dimension of being a stand in for all self-pitying delinquent fathers. [more]
Rocky execution aside, the play is not without humor, imagination, charm and whimsy, and the same can be said about the designs by Jessie Bonaventure (scenic), Johanna Pan (costumes), Kelley Shih (lighting), and Brian Heveron-Smith, (sound), all of which work well together to allow this tale to be told. The play’s wonderfully emotional climax which has Elle, Rebecca and Ethel casting off the shackles of their lives into the winds of an oncoming storm is absolutely jubilant and makes the entire evening worthwhile. [more]
The play captures emotions that many of us have felt, from unrequited love, to loss. Seldom are we allowed access to such a raw story and candidness. In a time where we shield each other from truths, this stark and unapologetic performance allows us to feel what Victor meant to Edgar. [more]
As a writer, O’Dell seems to eschew melodramatic elements, including pat endings with fully resolved conflicts. This a work grounded in sober reality, a work that rejects the prevalent idea that “closure” is something that will surely erase all scars and “make whole” once more those who’ve lived through such traumatic incidents. If there’s any “message” that O’Dell offers, it’s that keeping silent about having been raped can only exacerbate the pain. At the same time, she suggests, women who’ve experienced such assaults need to be able to come out about them in their own time. [more]
The problem with Vaynberg’s play, now being given its Off Broadway premiere, in which she plays the lead female role, is that it has so many interlocking plots that it can give you a headache trying to keep them straight. And as all of the actors play two and five roles it is difficult to always know who is who. While director Geordie Broadwater keeps the pace zipping along, this often makes it more of a strain to follow the convoluted plotting. Plus the extensive quoting from Tennyson’s Arthurian narrative poem, Idylls of the King (not identified until late in the play) doesn’t help a bit. [more]
A mulatto slave is sodomized with a large black dildo while in a canopy bed by his master’s wife who is decked out in Madonna-style dominatrix regalia. A white indentured servant fellates the boot of his black overseer after they’ve performed a balletic dance in their underwear. A snarling whip- wielding white overseer is abusive to a female black slave as she cleans his shack while twerking to Rihanna’s “Work.” Welcome to playwright Jeremy O. Harris’ overblown and overrated racial, social and sexual satire, "Slave Play." Striving for hilarity, it’s painfully unfunny. The wan shock value is more in the spirit of Mel Brooks than Jean Genet. [more]
Numb from two straight-through hours of far-right speechifying emoted in perpetual semi-darkness, the audience at "Heroes of the Fourth Turning" then endures a ghastly aria of despair by a Lyme Disease-debilitated character. We also soon learn a deafening recurring sound that was thought to be innocuous, may have supernatural ramifications as the play ends on an unjustified cryptic note. The shooting and implied mutilation of a deer during the awkward prologue was an omen that this was going to be a lulu of a bad play. It’s symptomatic of the uneasy symbolism threaded throughout. [more]
What is evident is that Zeller writes tremendous roles for actors. Frank Langella won the Tony Award back in 2016 for the title role of "The Father," and "The Height of the Storm" may well win others. The current production includes all but one of the British cast from Jonathan Kent’s London presentation and two-time Tony Award winner Jonathan Pryce and three-time Olivier Award winner Eileen Atkins give the kind of performances that legends are made of. As André, Pryce is like a lion in winter: confused, detached, incoherent at times, yet raging due to his loss of power, and completely bereft when his wife is not in the room. His anger is always palpable and makes him seem bigger than his actual stature. [more]
It is Ginger Grace as Amanda that is the crowning glory of this production. Though slender and frail looking, she is still a powerful, if bothersome figure, memories of a golden southern belle past clashing with her poverty-stricken present. Grace lives Amanda on the tiny Wild Project stage, making it seem large and teeming with life, although nothing really happens in "The Glass Menagerie," nothing that is except the dissolution of a family. [more]
Despite the fine writing and acting, these two plays do not stand alone: we are given no backstory to understand the context for these relationships in the longer saga; both plays dealing with a character’s depression, they are too similar in the theme of being haunted by the past; and thirdly, as they are basically two-character plays, both are too long for the limited story and plot lines they contain. Unlike the first two plays, these use two different directors (Loretta Greco for "runboyrun," and Awoye Timpo for "In Old Age"), ironically making them seem quite similar in style. [more]
A downer by its nature, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is playwright Chad Beckim’s heartbreaking 95-minute family drama depicting the ravages of rampant opioid addiction in the present day United States. It’s a bleak and accomplished take on the eternal subject of substance abuse. Mr. Beckim’s topical scenario is enforced by his skillful writing, the searing performances and the crisp production. [more]
When the Gingold Theatrical Group’s revival of Bernard Shaw’s epic "Caesar and Cleopatra" begins, the characters are wearing white contemporary clothes and sitting on what looks like an excavation site which might give one pause. Like David Staller’s revival of "Heartbreak House" last year, his Caesar and Cleopatra tries to give this 1898 play a more contemporary relevance, but unlike Heartbreak House which pointlessly updated that play to W.W. II rather than the usual W.W. I setting, this modern approach works extremely well and proves to be quite charming. [more]
It’s 1948 and we’re in an Italian prison where “The Beast of Rome,” German SS Colonel Herbert Kappler (1907-1978) is serving a life sentence for war crimes. Kappler was the Chief of Police of occupied Rome and was responsible for the deportation of Jews to concentration camps as well as ordering massacres of civilians. He is visited by his nemesis Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty (1898-1963). “The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican” was the nickname of this Irish prelate who as a Italian resistance figure saved the lives of over 6000 Allied soldiers and Jews during W.W. II. In real life, O'Flaherty did visit Kappler out of a quest of instigating redemption in the Nazi, and a complex friendship evolved. [more]
"Ludwig and Bertie," written by Douglas Lackey, gives us insight into the relationship of two of our greatest twentieth century philosophers, the younger Jewish Ludwig Wittgenstein and the 20-year-older atheist Bertrand Russell. Bertie, played smartly by Stan Buturla, is the wise old professor at Cambridge when he meets the almost half his age young student Ludwig, poignant, headstrong and hungry for more knowledge, insight and truth, played passionately by Connor Bond. [more]
Legendary director Peter Brook has always investigated the big questions. In recent years his productions have become more intimate and the questions bigger. In "Why?", written and directed by Brook and his collaborator of four decades, Marie-Hélène Estienne, the performance takes place on a nearly empty stage and uses only three actors to tell its story. While the performance is mesmerizing, the play seems unfocused, beginning with the question why do we do theater and ending with the political dangers to theater artists who create experimental theater. [more]
The latest offering by JoAnne Akalaitis, "Bad News! i was there…" is something of a misnomer, since none of us was there for the “bad news” of the ancient Greeks, which is what Akalaitis focuses on. If the text is cobbled together with passages taken from Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus, it can prove pretty tedious and at a far remove. But then, Akalaitis is more known for her spectacles than for her texts. [more]
Though off-putting, "Sunday"’s periodic non sequitur choreographic interludes become a respite from its bad writing and grating performances. For no discernable reason, characters stop speaking and engage in herky-jerky movements accompanied by crashing music and frenetic lighting. “A sort of frenzied dance. Think "They Shoot Horses Don’t They?" But perhaps slightly less macabre,” is the stage direction's description. The action then resumes. These tangents fill things out as the show is scant on plot. [more]
Katsura Sunshine is the stage name of this charismatic 49-year-old Toronto-born performer who relocated to Japan and apprenticed to a Rakugo artiste. Mr. Sunshine eventually became a notable practitioner in his own right and has the distinction of being a Westerner. Sunshine is affable, animated and possessed of a pleasing fast-paced vocal delivery that demonstrates comic timing and dramatic heft with a Canadian lilt. This vocal expressiveness combined with his shock of jagged blonde hair, striking facial features that he contorts into a gallery of expressions enables him to command the stage. Wearing a kimono, kneeling at a small table and handling the hallowed props of a fan and a hand cloth, he evokes the genre’s essence with assured authenticity. [more]
Imported from London and directed with finesse by Jamie Lloyd, Tom Hiddleston (Robert), Zawe Ashton (Emma), and Charlie Cox (Jerry), all making their Broadway debuts, are practically choreographed as they move about on an otherwise spare if elegant stage that features two simple chairs, a small table and little else. (The startling scenery and apt costumes have been designed by Soutra Gilmour.) That, too, is an appropriate metaphor for three characters that keep shifting their positions. [more]
The first act of Anna Moench's "Mothers" concludes with a genuine shock as the playwright startlingly upends all of our expectations. Visually punctuated by Wilson Chin's suddenly not-so-stable set, this audacious turn suggests Moench's intermittently funny satire of upper middle-class motherhood at a "Gymboree-style playroom" has only been a prelude to something much more challenging and profound. Unfortunately, what you soon begin to suspect is that Moench just ran out of narrative steam and started writing something else. [more]
Cusi Cram’s "Novenas for a Lost Hospital" (with dramaturgy by Guy Lancaster) presented by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is an unusual site-specific theatrical event that pays tribute to the now defunct St. Vincent’s Hospital which for 161 years was situated three blocks from the theater’s location. Directed by Daniella Topol, the play is both uneven and scattershot in its non-linear format and content. However, it conveys a great deal of information in an entertaining manner and has some affecting scenes of life in the hospital in two eras: the 1849 cholera epidemic when it was founded in the mid-19th century and the AIDS crisis in the final years of its tenure in the late 20th century. [more]
Halfway through the abstract hijinks there are fleeting references to terrorists, getting in trouble for bringing a little knife on an airplane and vague political debates as the tone grows more serious. Devotees of Mr. Wellman’s idiosyncratic style may be enchanted while anyone else could be baffled. Brevity, playfulness and presentational polish are its virtues. [more]
Both Moran and his script are disarming, captivating, touching, and thought-provoking. The audience cranes to hear his every truth-packed word, feeling his moments of joy and triumph as well as those of disappointment, resignation and, yes, even anger. [more]
The Flea Theater is honoring one of its co-founding members, playwright Mac Wellman, with a five play festival called “Perfect Catastrophes” which includes two world premieres and three revivals, with casts made up of The Bats, The Flea’s youthful resident company. First up are the one-act plays, "Sincerity Forever" and "Bad Penny," which require separate admissions but can be seen back to back on the same evening or afternoon. Any two of the plays in this festival are an immersive view of the avant-garde playwright who has created new works for almost 50 years and has won three Obie Awards. [more]
