Emily Rebholz

All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain

October 25, 2023

The subtitle of Patrick Page’s absorbing and informative one-man show "All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain” is an actuate description of the content of his presentation. In a kind of lecture-performance it is Page’s credible contention that Shakespeare took the Vice character (the villain from the Middle Ages' Morality plays through Christopher Marlowe) and added psychological realism. Eventually in his last play, "The Tempest," Shakespeare was dealing with a character with a very worthy justification for revenge who finds compassion and empathy instead. [more]

Gutenberg! The Musical!

October 25, 2023

How much you enjoy 'Gutenberg! The Musical!" likely depends on a combination of factors entirely unrelated to that German fellow: familiarity with the tropes it's skewering; your own level of disdain for such hackney execution; and your tolerance for Rannells and Gad's incessant mugging. In their first Broadway pairing since "The Book of Mormon" over a decade ago, Rannells and Gad are less a comic team than a comic rivalry, with neither willing to be the Abbott to the other's Costello. Fortunately, their ping-ponging, look-at-me dynamic only occasionally grows tiresome, usually when either of them is trying to gin up laughs that aren't there or shouldn't rise above a tee-hee. [more]

Becky Nurse of Salem

December 18, 2022

In any event, Ruhl has not written a play set in 1692 or a sequel to "The Crucible" but a comedy about free-spirited Becky Nurse, a descendant of the accused witch Rebecca Nurse, a pious 71-year-old woman who had nine children and was hard of hearing, who wishes to set the record straight. Although a fascinating premise, the problem with play is that it throws in everything except the kitchen sink – but, in fact, it makes use of metal freestanding toilet. The play attempts to cover multiple themes and topics: revisionist history, the opioid crisis, the generation gap, teenage suicide, the Salem Witch Trial, unemployment, medical care, the supernatural, adultery, and office harassment. Conceived and written between 2016 - 2019, the play also tries to connect Trump Rallies in which the crowds shouted “Lock her up” and Trump’s repeated use of the words “witch hunt” and his attempt to appear the victim to the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trial in 1692. All of this is too much weight for any one play. Director Rebecca Taichman’s uneven production does not help, though much of that is the fault of the shift in tone in the writing. [more]

The Merchant of Venice (Theater for a New Audience)

February 16, 2022

Arin Arbus, resident director at Theatre for a New Audience, staging her tenth classic for them took a great risk with her new production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: not only putting this 1597 play in modern dress, she has made Venice diversely multicultural as well as having the Jewish Shylock played by an African American. All of these things might have backfired and looked out of place. Surprisingly it all works, due to her spare, stripped-down direction, her fine cast, the nearly bare stone setting by Riccardo Hernandez which suggests an elegant Greek amphitheater, and her star, John Douglas Thompson with whom she has worked four times before in an assortment of classics. Along with the work of voice director Andrew Wade, the diction is crystal clear and Shakespeare’s verse sounds conversational and newly minted. [more]

Jagged Little Pill

December 15, 2019

Given the personal nature of Morissette's artistic output, it might be surprising to learn that the Broadway version of Jagged Little Pill doesn't take the easy biographical route for its book, mimicking, say, the mega-popular "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical," whose subtitle pretty much says it all. Instead, Morissette's album (Glen Ballard co-wrote the music) and a few of her other songs support an entirely original story from theater-novice Diablo Cody, whose Oscar-winning screenplay for "Juno" was funny, affecting, and decidedly superficial. This same descriptive mixed bag also holds true for Jagged Little Pill, which rises above typical jukebox musical fare, but not as much as it could have, largely because Cody is interested in hot-button issues, not characters. [more]

Nantucket Sleigh Ride

March 31, 2019

John Guare’s career as a playwright has had three stages. His early plays were examples of Theater of the Absurd with an American accent. Later his plays became more realistic, sometimes based on a true story or historic characters. In his new play "Nantucket Sleigh Ride" now at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse, he has returned to his absurdist roots with a wild comedy, configured in the form of a memory play by a former playwright which returns him to the summer of 1975. With a cast led by Broadway stars John Larroquette, Will Swenson and Douglas Sills, the play initially has a fascinating premise but goes off the deep end in its second half. Don’t blame the actors who work very hard to try to keep the play on the rails. [more]

Joan

January 29, 2019

Playwright Stephen Belber offers an intricate character study comprised of a barrage of brief nonlinear scenes chronicling the eventful existence of a woman from childhood to the age of 62. With the craft and depth of a fine novelist, Mr. Belber creates a mosaic of pointed incidents imparting vital information. These pass by rapidly with no discernable shape but then at the conclusion everything majestically falls into place. [more]

Gettin’ the Band Back Together

August 20, 2018

If the show plays like it was written by a committee, in fact, it has been. The book is by producer/ writer Ken Davenport and The Grundleshotz who turn out to be a group of performers and writers who originally workshopped the show in a series of improvised rehearsals. For the record, they are Sebastian Arcelus, Fred Berman, Michael Hirstreet, Jenna Coker Jones, Craig Jorczak, Nathan Kaufman, Emily McNamara, Jennifer Miller, Bhavesh Patel, Sarah Saltzberg (who is credited with additional material), Michael Tester, as well as Jay Kaitz who plays the second male lead in the show, Bart Vickers as though he were auditioning for Dewey, the laid-back music teacher in "School of Rock." [more]

The Low Road

March 20, 2018

Bruce Norris’ plays are so different from each other that you have to take his fingerprints to recognize his hand. His recent New York plays have dealt with racism and gentrification ("Clybourne Park"), politics ("Domesticated"), sexual mores ("The Qualms"), theories of time and space (A Parallelogram), and now in his latest production to reach NYC, "The Low Road" at The Public Theater, he offers a fascinating take on capitalism and the free market told as a picaresque and ribald 18th century tale of colonial America on the brink of statehood. Of course, its real target is today’s untenable global economic situation but his criticism is couched as an historical parable. [more]

Indecent

April 25, 2017

"Indecent" is, on the surface, the history of Yiddish writer Sholem Asch’s brave Yiddish play "God of Vengeance" which was—incredibly, considering its wise understanding of the Jewish demimonde—written in 1906 during the height of anti-Jewish pogroms. (Asch actually witnessed a pogrom and its ugliness tainted his life thereafter.) It is far more, though. The play is a look at the sweep of Jewish life in the twentieth century using Asch’s creation as the hook. [more]

All the Ways to Say I Love

September 30, 2016

"All the Ways to Say I Love You" is refreshingly free of this formula. The incidents are straightforwardly depicted and the circular conclusion is simple. LaBute palatably sets up the situation by establishing that the male student is a senior who has had to repeat a year of school, so he is clearly a young adult. It is implied that he is African-American and it is stated that Mrs. Johnson’s emotionally distant husband is of mixed race. Despite these intriguing elements, the play narratively peaks halfway through and then grinds on. [more]

Indecent

May 21, 2016

The production of "Indecent" now on the stage of the Vineyard is remarkable on many levels, not the least which is how engrossing it is considering the events are all historical record and the play deals with several serious ethical issues. It is ultimately an extremely moving document of human achievement, betrayal, and destruction. Cheers to Paul Vogel and Rebecca Taichman and their superb ensemble cast for this memorable theatrical evening. You will not be untouched by the final scene. [more]

The Tempest

June 20, 2015

The first thing one notices on entering the Delacorte Theatre is how empty the large stage looks. In Riccardo Hernandez’s scenic design, except for a tiny desk on the right and a small pile of rocks on the left, the playing area is simply a large open expanse that is backed by scaffolding which offers a kind of balcony or catwalk and in front of which are hung curtains or screens. On this is projected dark, churning seascapes in streaming video. As the setting for the play is an island, this is initially attractive but as it continues throughout the play, it becomes both distracting and superfluous. The costumes by Emily Rebholz in black and white are also devoid of color. David Lander’s lighting occasionally turns the stage blue, green or red, but this comes as an intrusion to the rest of the concept of the production. Along with the lack of magic until almost the end of this long play, it appears as if Greif’s interpretation of the play were simply to keep things spare and unadorned. Unfortunately, this tale which calls out for enchantment and sleight of hand is not the play to do this with. [more]

The Way We Get By

May 31, 2015

Mr. LaBute achieved prominence by writing and directing the films "In The Company Of Men" (1997) and "Your Friends and Neighbors" (1998). These scabrous works were followed by the unsettling play "The Shape of Things" in 2001, where a young woman seeks to physically transform her nerdish boyfriend into the perfect man. In succeeding years New York City has seen the premieres of a succession of such idiosyncratic formulaic explorations of the relationships between men and women. Here, this shtick is weak and totally unrewarding. [more]

Nice Girl

May 28, 2015

Set in Boston in 1984, "Nice Girl" is the story of Josephine “Jo” Rosen (Diane Davis), a 37-year-old secretary who lives with her mother. Davis’ Jo is the epitome of a “nice girl.” She keeps to herself, puts others first, and is afraid to say how she really feels in spite of clear emotional stress. Davis is an actress with immense emotional depth, and provides a varied and complex look at a protagonist whose self-inflicted pain, from an outsider’s perspective, is frustrating and also subtle enough that it feels totally conceivable. [more]

The Substance of Fire

May 5, 2014

Time has caught up with Jon Robin Baitz’s 1991 play and bankrupting one’s company over issues of integrity no longer seems quite admirable. Jon Robin Baitz writes literate, thoughtful plays like his 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Other Desert Cities. However, like the revival last fall of his earliest play The Film Society showed, plays may date badly or their attitudes become artifacts of another generation. [more]