Dmitry Zvonkov

EVERYTHING IS HAPPY INDEED In Jesse Eisenberg’s very funny and poignant one-act Happy Talk the excellent Susan Sarandon plays Lorraine, an amateur actress whose rosy, self-serving delusions lead to tragic consequences. We first meet Lorraine when she arrives late to her suburban home from rehearsal; she’s playing the part of Bloody Mary in a production…

SOC ON THIS Perhaps one of the reasons Socrates has become a god-like figure in the world of philosophy is that we know very little about the actual man who existed during the dawn of writing. He kept no diaries and wrote no treatises, yet philosophies attributed to the classical Greek thinker — Socratic Method,  Socratic…

DANCING AROUND DEATH “I thought we might show more decorum by keeping our long miserable mistake to ourselves,” Alice tells Edgar after he expresses his intention to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. “Oh come, Alice!” responds the aging artillery captain. “We’ve had fun. Now and then. And soon it will all be over. We’ll be…

CASTE ASIDE Todd Solondz, one of the most profound filmmakers working today (Happiness, Welcome to the Dollhouse), begins his first play Emma and Max  — which he also directs — with a scene right out of a Todd Solondz movie: An affluent white couple, Brooke and Jay, sit uncomfortable and tense in their living room opposite…

THIS ONE’S A BEEPER Richard Saudek’s one man show beep boop begins with a man struggling to break through an elastic translucent membrane. He succeeds and is born — spit out of a womb — emerging dressed like a Brooklyn millennial and holding a smartphone. What follows is a brilliant display of mime and clown…

EVERYTHING’S FINE, BUT WHAT IF WE HAD ALSO BEEN AFRAID? Starting out as a parody of Edward Albee’s Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Kate Scelsa’s Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf is a whimsical and witty feminist attack on what the play views as the failings of male dramatists. An abundance of quips, clever remarks, and…

A REY OF SUNSHINE ENDS UP CLOUDY Director Chay Yew mounts a spectacular production of Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus El Rey, a reworking of Sophocles’ tragedy set in the Barrio of present-day Los Angeles. Energetic performances, excellent use of a spare but effective set, dramatic lighting and music all make a powerful impression. This in spite…

FULL MEASURE More often than not, stagings of Shakespeare plays turn into dull, tedious exercises. The reasons for this vary but the one problem that always seems present is the lack of an artistically significant personal and urgent connection between material and interpreter. To put it another way, one often gets the sense of productions…

UNDER INSPECTION Michael Urie pops and sparkles as Ivan Alexandreyevich Hlestakov, a foppish but penniless out-of-work clerk who gets mistaken for the Czar’s inspector by the corrupt officials of a Russian backwater in Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Revizor. Reimagined by Mr. Hatcher as an out-and-out farce and directed as such by Jesse Berger,…

ROOM TO GROW In a way Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room is a perfect play. It’s like a well-ordered house, comfortable, professionally decorated, where everything works. The story is straightforward, told simply, about real people with real problems. We empathize with the characters and sympathize with their plight. Anne Kauffman’s tempered direction for Roundabout Theatre Company…

STET OFFENSIVE After watching Kim Davies’ inspired S&M play  Smoke, about two young people connecting in the kitchen of a house in which a sex party is in progress, I became an instant fan. Full of lovely subtleties and ambiguities, Smoke is something to see, and if you get a chance to catch a production I…

RADIANT THEATER In Philip Ridley’s brilliant black satire Radiant Vermin, a seemingly nice, average twenty-something couple with an infant, tells us of the horrible things they did to get their dream home, confident that once we’ve heard the whole story we’ll “understand,” as everything they did, they did “for baby.” Jill (Scarlett Alice Johnson) and…

A BRILLIANT TRIFLE Watching members of the Stephen Joseph Theatre perform Alan Ayckbourn’s Confusions under the playwright’s helmsmanship, I found myself mentally comparing the troupe to a team of Navy SEALs executing a mission with impeccable timing and precision. Performances are deft and subtle, with all five players demonstrating impressive range as each portrays a…