Paola Bellu

A MEAL THAT’S HARD TO DIGEST Staff Meal at  Playwrights Horizons is a light, surreal play with many points and no resolutions, intentionally unclear, written by  Abe Koogler  and directed by Morgan Green. Mina (Susannah Flood) and Ben (Greg Keller) are customers of the same coffee shop. They exchange head nods, a ‘hi’ or at most an awkward…

REIGNITING TAMARA DE LEMPICKA [Editor’s Note: Even with tonal problems, I enjoyed Lempicka, but a crowded season won out, and the new musical officially closes on May 19, 2024. Therefore, we are republishing our review today, so you can catch it soon. Actor George Abud is remarkable; his performance is one of the biggest snubs…

A PLAY FOR THE PEOPLE Written by Ibsen in 1882,  An Enemy of the People  is a powerful drama that reminds us, as a discouraging premonition, how people would go against truth and honesty in order to protect their personal interests. This version, adapted by playwright  Amy Herzog and directed by her husband Sam Gold  at  Circle in the Square…

STILL WATERS RUN DEEP Lia Romeo‘s  Still  at the DR2 Theatre, is a moving, intimate  play starring two confident actors, Jayne Atkinson  as Helen and  Tim Daly as Mark, who inhabit their roles with naturalism and nuance. Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt had only them in mind when she staged it because they almost never move, it’s all about their dialogue, and…

REIGNITING TAMARA DE LEMPICKA An epic story of entangled triangles is taking place at the Longacre Theatre,  where a happily married young woman falls in love with another young woman, a sex worker. If that isn’t scandalous enough for 1920, let’s add that our heroine’s commitment is to her husband, her passion to her new lover,…

A STEREOPHONIC SHOW WITH A MONOPHONIC SCRIPT Stereophonic was so evenly cherished by critics in its Off-Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons that it transferred to Broadway, where it opened tonight at The Golden Theatre. Why? The jury is still out. Andrew R. Butler and Eli Gelb It takes place in a Californian recording music studio…

A FISH OUT OF WATER The use of drama as a didactic tool usually works when we are learning new things or seeing old things through a different lens. Kia Corthron‘s Fish at Theater Row  starts right away with two known facts we should never forget: in America, rich areas end up with well-funded public schools…

PUSSY POWER How can we eradicate misogyny? Meet vagina dentata, a penis-eating vagina, the product of an ancient folk tale that exists in virtually every culture, and it has now landed at Playwrights Horizons in the form of a shameless, outrageous, campy-horror musical, Teeth. It is based on a eponymous 2007 film written and directed…

DOG AND PONY SHOW Looking at the long line that stretched all the way to 7th Avenue to get inside the 1920s Imperial Theatre, I thought I was about to see a masterpiece. I was not familiar with the plot but I knew it was a medley of Circus Arts and Broadway Theater, an alluring…

ONE FOR THE NOTEBOOKS While specialty branded tissue boxes are sold for $5 at the merch stands, the ushers at the Gerald Schoenfeld  Theatre should insert more in the playbill of The  Notebook. Whether you have had a dear one suffer from conditions that affect memory and thinking, or if you are just a sucker for love…

READY FOR A HOT BATH? Staged at The Flea Theater in Manhattan between the FBI building and an apocalyptic AT&T windowless high tower, Bathhouse.pptx — described as a “group project for perverts” by its creator Jesús I. Valles  — comes with an intangible mysterious quality before it even starts. Sam Gonzalez as Presenter Lights go on,…

AN ENGAGING FISHBURNE DOES A SLOW BURN Who doesn’t want to see Laurence Fishburne in a solo play he describes as “The stories and lies people have told me. And that I have told myself”? The theater at PAC/NYC, part of the World Trade Center complex, was packed with fans last night, and it was…

TAKING STOCK OF THE MURDOCH AFTERSHOCK: HACK. LIE. INTIMIDATE. CORRUPT. BEGIN AGAIN. Welcome to Rupert Murdoch’s wicked, treacherous media empire where everybody is under surveillance and can be potentially blackmailed. It’s the oldest trick in the book of dirty politics; knowing other people’s private secrets is essential to wielding corrupt power. Adapted by J.T. Rogers…

THE IDES HAVE IT It’s 44 BCE, March 15, and Julius Caesar walks toward his death, changing the course of Western history. Exactly 2,067 years later, at the West End Theater in New York, a commendable, ambitious experiment, adapted and directed by Bedlam Artistic Director  Eric Tucker, tackles the scorching subject, and leaves us with mixed…

FOR THOSE WHO THINK “RESCUE ME” AT JUKEBOX MUSICALS, “I KNOW A PLACE” WHERE A NEW 60s MUSICAL WILL CHANGE THAT “When you’re alone, and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown,” or to be exact you can always go to New World Stages, where the delightful, timely musical A Sign of…