Broadway

Call Me Izzy

June 13, 2025

Portraying the eponymous Izzy--or Isabelle per the formal preference of a long-ago teacher--the charismatic Smart earns our rapt attention throughout the play, though she cannot begin to overcome a first-person narrative that doesn't know that person particularly well. Wax, with journalistic straightforwardness rather than dramatic breadth, essentially reduces Izzy to a collection of abject sorrows and artistic inclinations, much of which Izzy shares while on a lid-down toilet seat in a locked bathroom. A grim sanctuary, it's where Izzy reads and writes poetry nightly, accomplishing the latter with an eyebrow pencil and a roll of toilet paper as her husband, Ferd, menacingly slumbers nearby in the bedroom of their Louisiana mobile home. [more]

Stranger Things: The First Shadow

April 30, 2025

"Stranger Things: The First Shadow" concludes with a Netflix joke that, besides being pretty funny, also represents a bit of chest-thumping for the play's outsized number of developers who manage to successfully blur the line between theater and television. Whether that's a good thing is a matter of taste, or a lack of it, but there's no denying that "Stranger Things: The First Shadow," which has journeyed from the West End to Broadway, is exactly the type of experience it wants to be: immersive; scary; and, even if you've never seen an episode of the streaming series from whence it comes, familiar. That's because, imaginatively befitting its source material, the play is a storytelling stew of cultural callbacks that owes a debt--presumably unpaid-- to Stephen King, Wes Craven, and other unsettling shapers of Gen-X childhoods. [more]

John Proctor Is the Villain

April 19, 2025

While Belflower’s play is clever and insightful, it is also contrived and manipulative attempting to shoehorn almost every feminist hot button topic into one story overlaying "The Crucible": date rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment on the job, toxic masculinity, patriarch dominance. It makes all of the male characters look like idiots and all of the women victims which is not exactly a reflection of real life. It also overloads the deck while at the same time copping out in the end. While New York teens are probably much more liberated than those in rural Georgia, the language of the play is incredibly devoid of swear or curse words which usually pepper the speech of adolescents. Finally, it borrows from Ivo van Hove’s 2016 staging of "The Crucible" in which a modern classroom also turns into a telling of Miller’s play. [more]

The Picture of Dorian Gray

April 16, 2025

However, it is not just the remarkable video design which uses sometimes up to six screens to convey the action of the story plus live action, but we get inside of the head of protagonist Dorian Gray in ways not possible before. Also seeing or hearing Snook as all the characters in different voices is quite a remarkable feat. Andrew Scott only plays eight in his Vanya one-man show, but here Snook also changes costumes repeatedly before our eyes and emerges as someone else. Beginning as the narrator, she slowly becomes Dorian Gray who eventually takes over completely. We also see her as Lord Henry Wotton, painter Basil Hallward, actress Sibyl Vane and later her brother James, the Duchess of Harley, and former friend and Oxford classmate Alan Campbell. [more]

Purpose

April 12, 2025

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ "Purpose" follows on the heels of their magnificently staged "August: Osage County," but unlike that dysfunctional family drama, this play has a great deal to say as well as major themes. Like the title of the author’s "Appropriate," "Purpose" has many meaning all used here at the same time. And never forget how much fun it is to have a private look in at the private lives of a rich and famous (but fictional) family when they are on their worst behavior. Do not be surprised if this play wins this year’s Tony Award followed by next year’s Pulitzer Prize. You can say you heard it here first. While the play is quite long, it is tremendously rewarding as great plays should be. [more]

Glengarry Glen Ross

April 9, 2025

With one exception, however, Marber's cast of notable wisecrackers treats Mamet's punchy dialogue solely like punchlines, even when they're face down on the canvas. As Shelley "The Machine" Levene, a loser among losers, Bob Odenkirk opens an Act I triptych of two-handers that are all set within a capacious Chinese restaurant, nonsensically designed by Scott Pask to indicate a gigantic establishment apparently getting along just fine serving no more than a couple of liquid-lunchers at a time. On the verge of being fired for bringing up the rear in a sales contest for a shiny new Cadillac--that old-timey signifier of virile American success--Levene tries to sweatily sweet-talk the best leads from Donald Webber, Jr.'s insensate office manager, a pleading effort that quickly devolves into a pathetic attempt at bribery. [more]

Good Night, and Good Luck.

April 7, 2025

If only film star George Clooney and his co-script writer Grant Heslov had hired an actual playwright to adapt their acclaimed screenplay for the 2005 film "Good Night, and Good Luck." for the Broadway stage. What worked in close up in the film does not have the same effect on the huge stage of the Winter Garden Theatre. And while David Strathairn as Edward R Murrow in the film, the role now played by Clooney on Broadway, also seemed wooden and unemotional, his every flicker of emotion on his face was telegraphed through the extreme close ups of every frame. With its cast of 22 on a huge CBS studio set, most of the characters are undefined or unidentified. At times it is difficult to know who is talking or where their voices are coming from on the multileveled setting. [more]

English

February 4, 2025

Marjan Neshat as Marjan the teacher in a scene from the Roundabout Theatre Company production of [more]

Cult of Love

December 26, 2024

Must you love your immediate family unconditionally if you know they drive you crazy? And must you show up for family gatherings like Christmas if it always evolves into a vicious fighting match? Is love nothing more than propinquity, that is biological closeness? Leslye Headland’s "Cult of Love" produced by Second Stage at Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theater, a searing comedy-drama, reminds us that most American plays other than Our Town are about dysfunctional families that make various levels of accommodation to their problems. The cast led by Zachary Quinto, Mare Winningham and David Rasche are consummately believable as a family who has seen too many Christmases devolve into shouting matches. [more]

Eureka Day

December 18, 2024

It's the play's best scene, an astounding mix of incredible absurdity and, for all the Zoom veterans out there, undeniable believability, especially with everyone talking and typing past each other. Still, while serving the play's humor, director Anna D. Shapiro must simultaneously contend with its overt underside, sick children, as well as a modern audience replete with the traumatic knowledge that, after the 2018-2019 school year, the worst is yet to come. Given that, it's an outright testament to the impressive comedic talents of Shapiro, Spector, and the play's ensemble that the subject matter of "Eureka Day" can remain a laughing matter. [more]

Romeo+Juliet

November 11, 2024

This is another one of those cut down versions of Shakespeare with only ten actors in total. As result, seven of the ten actors double (one triples). The problem is that almost all of the actors have to appear in every scene to fill out the stage. It is also very difficult to know who is who with almost every actor (other than the two leads) playing more than one character, some in gender swaps. The Nurse played by (Ms.) Tommy Dorfman also plays Tybalt, while Mercutio, The Friar and the Prince are all played by actress Gabby Beans. [more]

Left on Tenth

October 27, 2024

Although the play is graceful and appealing, it is mainly presented in narrative form with Delia played by Julianna Margulies in New York and Peter Gallagher playing Dr. Peter Rutter, her surprise new boyfriend from California, reading their emails to each other from desks at opposite sides of the stage. Left on Tenth, with its episodic nature, and many short scenes, is really a screenplay with the lead actors doing the equivalent of the voice-overs. Susan Stroman, best known for her choreography and direction of musicals, has piloted the play with polish and urbanity, but has not solved all the play’s problems. [more]

Our Town

October 26, 2024

Wilder’s experimental play uses no scenery except for two tables, some chairs, a piano and usually two ladders for the upstairs bedroom windows of the young people. Here, however, Leon and set designer Beowulf Boritt have eliminated the ladders for two windows that open in the wooden back wall. Parsons’ description of the town and the street is so vivid that your imagination sees all that is meant to be there. Many of the stage effects are created by Allen Lee Hughes’ subtle lighting plot which takes us back to the end of the last century with lanterns both on the footlights and in Parsons’ hand. Leon has also added another one of the five senses by piping in the odors of heliotrope, vanilla, and bacon, one in each act. Professor Willard is here played by a woman, and as John McGinty playing milkman Howie Newsome is hearing challenged, the other actors speak to him in sign language, a new effect for this drama. [more]

Yellow Face

October 21, 2024

Clearly, Hwang’s playwright-within-the-play has been on a colorful journey, full of characters that amuse, anger and move him. Hwang’s genius here is his ability to spin his real life into a fascinatingly entertaining work using all these events and characters. He is artful in balancing the lighthearted with the sardonic and the dramatic, the result being a colorful portrait. The flier for "Yellow Face" shows its handsome star Daniel Dae Kim holding a mask of his smiling face away from his own scowling visage, a witty take on the Greek Comedy/Drama masks, a shorthand for "Yellow Face"’s richness. Of course, having Daniel Dae Kim in the central role embodies his character with depth and subtlety. [more]

The Hills of California

October 16, 2024

In a theatrical era when "full-length" works often fail to exceed 90 minutes, the English playwright Jez Butterworth dares to dubiously dramatize for approximately twice that span. His previous Broadway epic, "The Ferryman," conflated The Troubles with anachronistic paganism, a disturbed old woman's fear of banshees, and lots of boozing, earning Butterworth much critical acclaim, as well as Olivier and Tony Awards, for this bold mix of pretentiousness and unabashed Irish stereotyping. "The Hills of California," Butterworth's latest overhyped synthetic slog teeming with underdeveloped characters, is basically a tale of two postwar entertainment cities: Los Angeles, the world's dream capital, and Blackpool, England, a fading resort town that's become uniquely fit for delusions. [more]

McNeal

October 15, 2024

As in Ayad Akhtar’s plays "Disgraced," "JUNK" and "The Who and the What," all of which have been produced by the Lincoln Center Theater, "McNeal" is always interesting, always arresting. Unfortunately, in McNeal each scene seems to bring up a new theme and never completely finishes with the previous one. The individual confrontations are fine, but they never coalesce into a unified whole other than to depict the messy life of a famous author which can’t be the author’s sole purpose. Is the message that Artificial Intelligence is dangerous or only in the hands of the wrong people? [more]

The Roommate

September 19, 2024

Of course, with Farrow and LuPone under the direction of six-time Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien, this is an occasion for cheering although this comedy drama, a cross between a female version of "The Odd Couple" and "Breaking Bad" is both predictable and razor thin. However, it is also a scenario for two consummate actresses to strut their stuff. The roles are not a great stretch for either of them – Farrow has often played grown-up waifs and LuPone has often been seen in recent years as a New York sophisticate, but these are the kind of performers that hold your attention at all times, making you afraid to look away and miss anything. [more]

Job

August 9, 2024

Max Wolf Friedlich's "Job" starts out with a bang or, more accurately, a near bang that elicits a couple of immediate worries: first, something awful will happen to a seemingly benign character and, second, a potentially overreaching playwright does not have anywhere dramatically to go after such a skillfully crafted throat-grabber. While the stress of the former concern rises and falls and rises again, the sense of foreboding from the other one eventually fades away as the thoughtful depths of Friedlich's compact, mind-bending two-hander become increasingly apparent. Given this gradual profundity, Job is the rare work that genuinely rewards repeat attendance, an opportunity undoubtedly appreciated by theatergoers who have seen Job in either or both of its off-Broadway stints during the past year (the play's world premiere at the SoHo Playhouse received an enthusiastic review from our Editor-in-Chief Victor Gluck). [more]

Home

June 18, 2024

No matter where you grew up, that place always elicits a tangled mix of memories, including sorrows that were often beyond one's control. That's certainly true for Cephus Miles (Tory Kittles), the Black protagonist of "Home" who endures a particularly powerless coming of age in lawfully segregated North Carolina. The play, which earned Tony Award-nominated success on Broadway, in 1980, after a critically acclaimed downtown run, was revived Off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in 2008 as part of a season-long tribute to the Negro Ensemble Company, the artistic home of "Home" and its author Samm-Art Williams. Sadly, he passed away right before previews began for his sensitive work's current and only Broadway reappearance, a beautiful production that has now also turned into a fitting memorial. [more]

Mother Play, A Play in Five Evictions

May 9, 2024

"Mother Play," though based on Vogel’s own life, is her most schematic, more an outline barely fleshed out with lots of details rather than the intense emotional revelations of her earlier works such as "How I Learned to Drive" and "Indecent." The chronological span of the play precludes anything but a quick portrayal of a procession of life-changing events in the Herman family and the rest of the world. Only Martha comes close to revealing her inner tumult at being torn between her mother and her brother. AIDS and other markers of the fast-moving decades are served up too quickly and with foregone conclusions in weak attempts to pluck the audience’s heart strings. [more]

Mary Jane

May 5, 2024

The play is an expression of the quiet whirlwind within Mary Jane’s soul, exquisitely expressed by the warm McAdams, surrounded by the boundless support of the others. Director Anne Kauffman masterfully allows the play to express vast emotions in the most subtle ways. What might have been a tearjerker is so much more, a chance to completely belong in this character’s mind and heart. [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]

Patriots

April 28, 2024

If there's a compelling reason to see "Patriots," it's Stuhlbarg, a Julliard-trained actor who can elevate flawed material with the best of them. In "Patriots," his talent bridges a director and writer who are never in sync, finding meaning in Goold's absurdity and a recognizable person in Morgan's pomposity. Actually, the latter frequently has benefited from this type of good fortune. молодец, mate! [more]

Stereophonic

April 27, 2024

David Adjmi’s "Stereophonic" at the Golden Theatre, a transfer under the auspices of Playwrights Horizons, is a minutely detailed, almost minute-by-minute recreation of a recording session by a rock band, purportedly based on Fleetwood Mac’s creation of its epic album "Rumours" in 1976. (Adjmi has denied that this was his inspiration, claiming that the show has an amalgam of sources.) [more]

Oh, Mary!

April 9, 2024

No one should be sacrosanct or above satirical treatment, not even our heroes. Everyone has feet of clay. Cole Escola in their huge hit "Oh, Mary!" at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Greenwich Village certainly believes this. Their over-the-top, irreverent take on Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth is so scurrilously sexual that it is difficult to avoid guffawing at their magnificent awfulness helped by Escola’s constant silly shtick and blatant playing to the audience, all of whom seemed to be having fun. [more]

Dead Outlaw

April 1, 2024

Conceived by Yazbek, the show is structured as a folksy retelling of the haplessly heinous Elmer McCurdy's life and post-life story, with the unbelievably true and undeniably dead portion reaching its final chapter after a prop person discovered Elmer's mummified corpse in 1976 on the set of "The Six Million Dollar Man." Unfortunately, Yazbek's collaborators from the Tony-winning "The Band's Visit"--book writer Itamar Moses and director David Cromer--are decidedly second fiddles this time around, adding little to the proceedings to make "Dead Outlaw" notable as anything other than a pretty solid concept album, especially as performed by an indefatigable combo that includes Della Penna belting out some of his own lyrics and strumming multiple instruments. [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]

Prayer for the French Republic

January 15, 2024

Harmon meticulously fuses the domestic ups and downs of this bright, well-educated extended family with the overwhelming and unavoidable social upheavals that surround them whether it’s the Nazi persecutions or the rise in anti-Jewish violence and rhetoric in contemporary France. Their story is epic, but intimate. David Cromer, the director, isn’t afraid to keep "Prayer" flowing in a deliberate, unhurried pace, or pausing at times letting the play breathe. He makes the epic quite human scale. "Prayer for the French Republic" is monumental, yet human scaled, addressing a resurgent scourge with intelligence and warmth. [more]

Appropriate

January 10, 2024

Not only is Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ "Appropriate" a classic American family drama with a new wrinkle, it is also a trenchant and scorching look at American racism which is just under the surface. So fine a playwright has Jacob-Jenkins become that every line of dialogue develops character and plot. What is most shocking about the play is how little the younger generation depicted knows about its American history, things we all should be aware of. Lila Neugebauer’s production for Second Stage mines all of the play’s nuances and her staging is smooth and effortless. The cast led by stage, screen and television stars Sarah Paulson, Corey Stoll and Elle Fanning (in her Broadway debut) make the most of their many opportunities. "Appropriate" is the most satisfying new American play on Broadway at this time and should not be missed. The running time may seem long but the rising tension and periodic revelations make the play feel like it could even be longer. [more]

I Need That

November 12, 2023

A repetitively thin outlook on grief, "I Need That" ostensibly concludes with an image of healing, but I'm not sure why, or if it actually does. It's possible the famously prolific Rebeck had another play to write and figured DeVito would leave the audience feeling better no matter what she put on the page. That wasn't a bad bet, I suppose, but not everyone has the privilege of casting DeVito to pull attention away from writing that ultimately falls prey to a cheaply metaphoric sunrise (no knock on lighting designer Yi Zhao who was just doing his job). [more]

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding

October 10, 2023

"Jaja" is quite different from Bioh's other plays in that it is also very revealing about life in NYC for African immigrants. Directed by Whitney White who has piloted several major new Black plays in recent years, the play is funny, poignant and illustrative. The excellent and compelling cast of 11 includes six fine actors making their Broadway debuts. David Zinn’s detailed hair salon puts every inch of Jada’s Harlem African Hair Braiding parlor on stage down to the last braid and bobby pin. [more]

Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch

October 5, 2023

In 1961, Ossie Davis channeled the hurt of growing up in segregated Georgia into "Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through The Cotton Patch," humorously attacking the cause of his suffering rather than giving into it. A Broadway revival of the play, the first since those heady days of the modern Civil Rights Movement, is a current reminder that it's possible to smile through the pain. That it's a needed one is the tragedy. [more]

The Shark Is Broken

August 17, 2023

As for what's in a name, yes, Ian Shaw is Robert's son, returning the life-giving favor not just through his words but also bodily, portraying his father in "The Shark Is Broken" with a candid empathy (and astonishing physical resemblance) that highlights the elder Shaw's strengths while giving context to his weaknesses, too. Because of ongoing technical difficulties with Spielberg's monstrous mechanical fish, known as Bruce, there was protracted downtime during the filming of "Jaws," which the play fills with imagined conversations between Robert and his co-stars Richard Dreyfuss (Alex Brightman) and Roy Scheider (Colin Donnell). Despite set designer Duncan Henderson's remarkable recreation of the Orca, the movie's barely seaworthy boat, hardcore Jaws fans might feel as if they've been bait-and-switched, since, in the final tally, they only get one early image of a not-so-ominous shark fin to satiate their thrill-and-chill-seeking expectations. In keeping with what's on the marquee, it quickly malfunctions, sinking into video designer Nina Dunn (for PixelLux)'s vast ocean backdrop, never to be seen again. [more]

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