Charles Kruger

SWEENEY NOD By any measure, Irish playwright Brian Friel (who died in 2015) is one of the 20th-century’s great dramatists, whose works are among the lasting treasures of Irish literature. Irish Repertory Theatre is concluding its season of The Friel Project, a retrospective of Friel’s work starting with Translations, Aristocrats and Philadelphia, Here I Come!,…

THE CHOSEN FEW There is an impressive collection of talent on display in The Lonely Few, a rock musical making its New York debut at MCC after a run in Los Angeles at the Geffen Playhouse. Composer Zoe Sarnak has been making a lot of noise. In fact, as The Lonely Few is making its…

A GROUNDBREAKING ACHIEVEMENT INDEED The short take on this play is that Jake Shore — as they say at the website The Rumpus — WRITES LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER. He is new to me, but he’s not an unknown quantity. At least one critic has compared his previous work to Beckett. In my case, both Harold…

All of Me is a rom-com in which the central couple are wheelchair users and unable to speak; they use text-to-speech technology. The New Group‘s production, which opened last night at Pershing Square Signature Center, is directed with loving care by Ashley Brooke Monroe. Rarely do we see actors perform under such restrictive circumstances. How…

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF OCTOBER 7 BECOME A SHATTERING THEATRICAL EVENT After the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the husband-and-wife team of journalists Phelim McAleer, playwright, and Ann McElhinney, producer, were concerned to notice that “good people were forgetting about what had happened in Israel that day.” They have an impressive resume of covering difficult…

ALL IN A GOLDEN AFTERNOON Dan Lauria‘s gentle two-hander, which opened today at Theater 555, is a sly variation on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Two characters, named simply “man” and “woman,” find themselves at a metaphorical crossroads, alone, with nothing but a bench and a streetlamp to set the scene. For the Off-Broadway premiere,…

REMEMBER, THERE ARE NO SMALL PARTS, ONLY HILARIOUS ACTORS Ronnie Larsen, a prolific stalwart of Queer theatre, Off-Broadway and around the country, has made what clearly qualifies as a triumphant return to New York with The Actors, a hilariously funny play performed with comic grace by a fine company from South Florida, Plays of Wilton…

TASTY BUT FLAT FRYBREAD Carolyn Dunn‘s new play The Frybread Queen features three generations of Navajo women gathered at the reservation home of the family matriarch for the funeral of Paul Burns. Authoritative Dawn Jamieson is the matriarch and the deceased’s mother, Jessie Burns. Ria Nez is Jessie’s equally strong-minded daughter and Paul’s sister Carlisle…

NEW DANCE-THEATER MAKES A BIG (ILLI)NOISE   For countless millennial hipsters, Illinois  (2005) is THE album of their coming of age, as well it should be. Now, New York City Ballet’s wunderkind Justin Peck (Spielberg’s  West Side Story) and playwright  Jackie Sibblies Drury  (We Are Proud…) translate Sufjan Stevens‘ 2005 concept album into a wordless, glorious dance musical. (front) Byron…

IT WON’T WIN A PULITZER, BUT IT WILL REMIND YOU TO “BELIEVE IN LOVE” It is the fashion nowadays to present musicals with legitimate claims to sophisticated art, with elegant musical settings, deep emotional explorations, and sophisticated social and political analysis. None of this is bad, but what happened to good old clap your hands…