Marko Mandič is an award-winning acclaimed classical actor from Slovenia who has worked several times with Mr. Buljan. His talent, charisma, and physicality justify that acclaim as witnessed here by his performance in the title role. Vocally expressive and emotionally volatile, he is truly naked through most of the play’s second half and unselfconsciously performs heroically even through the most awkward sequences. These include the incident with the watermelon and later painting his genitals black to match those of the actor playing Orestes who doesn’t display his. [more]
Victor Morales enters and introduces himself and notes that we are at Dixon Place. Mr. Morales who created this piece is stocky, bald, bespectacled, and possessed of a quirky everyman presence. For just under an hour, he delivers an amusing lecture with serious overtones enhanced by the illustrative projections. [more]
Every member of this trio has experienced love and loss, and this show explores what it truly means to be human. Moments of drama exemplify the character’s toughest challenges, and their individual approaches to solving them. The strength of a woman as the leader of a household is brought to the surface, as these women have been let down by the men in their lives. The bond they share ultimately proves that true happiness can be found whether you achieve your personal goals and dreams or find something beautiful within yourself. [more]
The legendary stage actress Kathleen Chalfant is appearing in her second one-woman show, a follow-up to her “Mrs. Dalloway” in The Party, from the Virginia Woolf stories in 1993. This time she plays Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 79-year-old matriarch of the most famous political family in 20th century America. It is July 1969 and we meet her in the tasteful living room of her Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, home (designed by Anya Klepikov) one week after her youngest son Teddy’s tragic accident at Chappaquiddick. The premise of "Rose, The Kennedy Story as Told by the Woman Who Lived It All" is that we are members of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Knight of the Redeemer visiting from Dublin. We are invited to stay until Teddy comes back from sailing which he has been doing since the previous day. Her husband Joe, Sr., who has had a stroke eight years before is being cared for in an upstairs bedroom. [more]
Author Jane Martin has taken the familiar dramatic staple of a love story between two clashing opposites and rendered it compellingly here. There are plot twists, witty dialogue and violent incidents all with a tone-combining sweetness and melancholy. Jake is a depressive riddled with self-doubt and Deborah’s devoutness complicates her personal emotions. [more]
Pendleton has made some strange directorial choices. Characters appear on stage and stand silently long before their entrances. This is distracting as one wonders are they supposed to hear the conversations taking place. Many of the entrances and exits take place through the main aisle of the theater which breaks the fourth wall convention continually. He has also cast several actors as older than they are described so that this shifts the character relationships appreciably. The most famous scene in the play when Nora slams the door, possibly the most iconic moment in modern drama, is diluted considerably as there is no door for Nora to slam. Harry Feiner’s set design has the drawing room and bedroom visible side by side throughout the play which seems somewhat inappropriate for the 19th century setting. [more]
The pleasure of" Night Is a Room" is watching these three expert actors speak Wallace’s rich, insightful language which veers from wittily highfalutin to excitingly vulgar. Charting their emotional reactions which teem with hyperbolic outbursts, she has her finger on the pulse of these three self-deluders. Bill Rauch directed with total comprehension, walking a fine line between permitting the audience to observe the drama and also be mystified and appalled by these awful people.
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The great mid-20th century American poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell were friends from 1947 until his sudden death 30 years later. As they were usually in different cities and countries (Bishop lived in Brazil for many years while Lowell lived in New York City and Boston), they wrote each other over 450 letters which were published in 2008 as "Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell." Sarah Ruhl, an adventurous playwright whose plays tend to be very different from each other, has adapted the letters for the stage in a homage to writing and friendship called Dear Elizabeth in which all of the words are that of the poets. Kate Whorskey’s fascinating production for WP Theater (formerly The Women’s Project) has staged the play much in the manner of last year’s revival of A.R. Gurney’s "Love Letters" and also with revolving casts. [more]
Arthur Miller is having a great posthumous 100th birthday! "A View from a Bridge" opened on Broadway to sensational reviews to be followed soon by "The Crucible." Now a revival of "Incident at Vichy," his frightening, microcosmic examination of Nazi-occupied France during the height of World War II, is enjoying a fine revival at the Signature Theatre. While the first two plays are each experiencing radical re-assessments, the director of Vichy, Michael Wilson has opted for a straight-forward, naturalistic interpretation in which each character exists as a finely etched portrait and the set (by Jeff Cowie) is a real, frightening place down to the period French newspapers plastering the holes in the windows. [more]
Metropolitan Playhouse has done itself proud with its revival of the rarely seen "Alison’s House." Alex Roe’s splendid production with its accomplished cast demonstrates the vitality of Susan Glaspell’s play as well as its contemporary relevance. This is a revival of the highest caliber. [more]
From offstage we hear the hyperbolic exclamations of a young man, Copious Fairchild, as he masturbates mixed with the soundtrack of a television cooking show. He enters the living room with a jar containing his semen and places it on the coffee table. After favorably commenting on its magnitude his young wife Hibiscus Van Der Waal, takes it and goes offstage. We soon hear her orgasmic sounds as she inseminates herself during this anti-sexual reproductive process called “coagulating.” It’s a pivotal sequence in Stephen Kaliski’s excruciating futuristic spoof "Gluten!" [more]
Aside from the obvious theme of morality in politics, the play also deals devastatingly with issues of privacy in public life and in the information age. Can David keep the news of the abortion secret? How will the press deal with his Asian sister showing up? Which side are the pundits on the web on? Can the Carver campaign ride out the storm? The contemporary issue of date rape is also explored thoroughly. "Promising" ends with a sensational denouement which will leave the audience with much to think about. [more]
Ms. Rush is also the performer and she is stupendous. In addition to playing Bernadette, she portrays a gallery of characters she encounters. These include her parents, a priest, her gay male best friend, her Rockette confidante, her husband, her son and a few others. Rush effortlessly switches back and forth among these multiple roles with precision and vivid physical and vocal details, offering great depth to each. [more]
The best role in the story is that of sociopath, deranged Annie Wilkes. Metcalf runs the gamut of emotions from bliss to murderous rage and back and turns on a dime. Unlike Willis, she uses her face to show all of her moods both pleased and black. Always interesting to watch, her Annie is revealed as crazier the longer the story goes on. The scenes in which she has to get Paul back into bed suggest that her Annie not only contains tremendous emotional extremes but also enormous strength from years running her farm. Playing the role less childless-like than Kathy Bates did in the movie, she makes Annie Wilkes all her own. As the third member of the cast in the minor role of the sheriff, Brown is completely convincing but he hasn’t been given much to do in his few brief scenes. [more]
It was inevitable that legalized gay marriage would lead to plays about gay parenthood. "Dada Woof Papa Hot," Peter Parnell’s sweet-natured, but frustratingly narrow-focused, new play at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater explores the kind of child rearing issues formerly supposedly experienced only by straight couples, at least straight couples with large bank accounts. To bring the theme of gay marriage further into the mainstream, divorce also rears its ugly head. [more]
Admittedly, many of the ideas in the play are hardly new or revolutionary: the first measures to limit the scope of the British monarchy’s power date back to the 1215 Magna Carta and subsequent arguments challenging the divine right of kings include the American Declaration of Independence, drafted in 1776. Rather, this production’s merit lies in the shocking immediacy it brings to the subject. Acutely aware of the fact that the nearly 90 year-old Queen will not live forever, Bartlett takes us into a not-too-distant future where the inevitable change of the empire’s figurehead sends the nation into a state of upheaval. His England is just melodramatic enough that to allow us to see it as fictional yet a shade too realistic to feel truly dystopian. [more]
The title refers to three generations of women whose lives have been derailed by early pregnancies. When the play begins, we are in the modest home of embittered, single mom Maggie (Perabo) who is late for work at the Bloomingdale outlet during a nor’easter when she finds that her car has been stolen. When she also discovers that her daughter Erica hasn’t been to school that day, she realizes that her car hasn’t been stolen but taken by her daughter who it turns out has a boyfriend her mother knew nothing about. However, Maggie can’t afford to lose her job - or her mortgage - as her cushion this month is all of $23 and she is a “pizza an’ a six pack away from bouncing the electric bill.” This is life on the edge of subsistence for many Americans. [more]
The National Asian American Theater Company’s world premiere of Lloyd Suh’s "Charles Francis Chan, Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery" is best categorized as fiercely provocative satire. The play has two storylines. The first follows a 1960’s Frank who is developing and producing a murder mystery; the second being scenes from the aforementioned murder mystery, which is a stylized production featuring an Asian woman in white face as an elegant old debutant, and conversely an American Vietnam veteran in brown face as the Asian Detective Charles Chan, namesake to the production. [more]
Handled as stand-up comedy, Story tells us that he did not at first accept Dr. Gray’s theories until he heard one of his lectures, and then he became a convert to the concept that men and women’s thinking and feeling is so different that they might as well be from separate planets. Story uses his own life as an endless source of comic anecdotes to illustrate Gray’s ideas: his own courtship, marriage and life with his wife Megan. Basically, the theory boils down to men needing trust and approval while women need attention and understanding. Initially, Story’s mirthful tales are of how he caused unnecessary conflicts with his wife by not following these rules. Eventually, he learns the hard way through trial and error, and ultimately improves his life and marriage. [more]
For the first half of Stephen Karam’s “The Humans,” the Blake family Thanksgiving seems to be nothing but a banal seasonal gathering. And then suddenly the author’s message comes into focus and the play becomes a haunting drama and unnerving ghost story which is unlike anything you have seen lately. The superb cast headed by Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell under the direction of the always interesting Joe Mantello who has piloted many important new plays turns The Humans into a memorably unique experience. Karam, whose plays include Speech and Debate and Son of the Prophet, has been given a splendid Roundabout Theatre Company production for its third premiere of one of his plays. [more]
The energizing conceit of the play is its reliance on audience participation that adds considerably to the entertainment. During the action, the audience gets to ask questions of all those involved and at the intermission a detective is in the theater’s lobby to confer with. It all means that the actors besides sticking to the script must also improvise a great deal. This breaking of the “fourth wall” is done very cleverly and believably. The audience also votes on who the killer is based on all of the facts that have been presented. Therefore, each performance varies based on those in attendance. [more]
Directed with comfortable assurance and a leisurely sense of timing, this "Sylvia" benefits from a (mostly) strong cast, including three Tony Award winners: Matthew Broderick (whose wife Sarah Jessica Parker played the title role in the original off-Broadway production), Julie White and Annaleigh Ashford. The brilliant, versatile Robert Sella who expertly and drolly plays three diverse roles, rounds out the cast. [more]
Roundabout Theatre Company has commissioned yet another new stage adaptation from British playwright Helen Edmondson, whose previous plays also include stage versions of Tolstoy’s "Anna Karenina" and George Eliot’s "The Mill on the Floss." In the title role, Keira Knightley who has been associated with period drama in her distinguished film career ("Atonement," "Pride and Prejudice," "Anna Karenina," and, of course, the "Pirates of Caribbean" movies) has chosen to make her Broadway debut. She is supported by Tony Award-winner Gabriel Ebert ("Matilda"), British actor Matt Ryan, and two time Tony Award-winning actress Judith Light ("Lombardi," "Other Desert Cities," "The Assembled Parties.") Unfortunately, director Evan Cabnet has chosen to stage this most French of tales in a bloodless, refined English style which doesn’t serve with the material well. [more]
Ms. Nielsen has long been a treasured award-winning fixture of the New York stage with her quirky idiosyncratic comedic and dramatic talents. Here as the omnipotent matriarch Paige she is colossal. With her animated features, giddy voice, and frantic physicality, she delightfully mines every bit of the abundant dark comedy in the play. Alternately when slowing down to express fiercely serious sentiments she is chilling. This searing performance is yet another memorable turn from this incomparable actress. [more]
In Aleks Merilo’s play, "The Widow of Tom’s Hill," human nature is tested in the face of a life-threatening plague. Under Rachel Black Spaulding’s direction, this play takes place in a small town off the coast of Washington in 1918, with audiences first meeting a young widow named Aideen (Lucy Lavely) struggling to provide for her young child. She must fight for survival and take caution against anyone who crosses her path. From the beginning scene, audiences can surmise the rough past she’s encountered that’s forced her to become her own soldier against the cruel, harsh outside world. [more]
New Worlds Theatre Project’s mission is to present English language translations of Yiddish plays as comparable to their contemporaries Chekhov and Ibsen. Now they have turned to a first English translation by producing artistic director Ellen Perecman of David Pinski’s Yiddish classic, "Professor Brenner," which appears to have had no previous production. The reason may have been Pinski’s frankness about sexual relations and the controversial nature of the subject matter for the Yiddish–speaking community. [more]
"Perfect Arrangement," Topher Payne’s first play to reach New York, is a well-crafted and engrossing play with much to say and has been magnificently staged in its Off Broadway debut. Don’t let the initial sit-com style fool you: this play has several serious messages at its heart about our personal freedoms and how repression starts at home. [more]
Continuing the trend of producing challenging new works of theater in interactive environments, The Representatives are back with a riveting production of Stan Richardson’s "Veritas." Founded by Richardson along with Matt Steiner, the duo behind The Representatives chose to have their newest project performed at The Cave @ St. George’s, the ornately decorated basement chamber of the 300 year old St. George’s Church. [more]
Havergal’s adaptation is unusual in that it uses four male actors to play 25 roles including the central role of Aunt Augusta, with all the actors taking turns narrating the story. Dressed exactly alike in each act, Thomas Jay Ryan, Jay Russell, Daniel Jenkins and Rory Kulz switch identities, nationalities, age, and genders in a madcap adventure told with decided British understatement. This is challenging for the audience as well as the actors: since the performers do not change costumes, it is necessary to follow the plot closely to follow who is who, with the actors sometimes changing characters in the same scene. Steven C. Kemp’s minimal but clever unit set is not much help either as it remains basically the same in each act throughout all of the outrageous adventures that unlikely hero Henry Pulling is taken on by his aunt. [more]
Rubin-Vega dazzles from her first moments on stage. She is sassy and witty while sharing her life story in a raspy tone to match the mood, and maintains this intense connection with the audience the entire time. All eyes are on her as we comprehend her past and are in suspense as we see her present life unfold after learning the secrets of this empanada shop. They are unexpected and gruesome and will make the hair stand up on your head. The lighting design by Bradley King adds to the haunting atmosphere as there are moments when the light shines just right on Rubin-Vega and all you see is her face in the dark. [more]
Robert O’Hara’s "Barbecue" may seem like a series of sleights of hand, but as a satirist of American culture, the playwright has a good deal to say about how the media shapes and defines our culture by how it reports the evens of the day. Under the direction of Ken Gash, Barbecue will take your breath away at its invention and cleverness while holding up the mirror to our natures, exactly what theater is supposed to do. [more]
