Paulanne Simmons

‘CAUSE YOU GOT TO HAVE FRIENDS Israeli playwright Anat Gov’s Best Friends comes to the 14th Street Y with an impressive history. Best Friends is the longest-running comedy in Israel and winner of the prestigious Israel National Theater Award for Best Comedy in 1999. It also had a sold-out run at Rattlestick Theater. Now, directed…

UNIQUE, DELICIOUS, ENTERTAINING, MAGICAL No matter how many times illusionists deceive our eyes and mentalists read our minds, we are always amazed by their feats. This is certainly true of Scott Silven, whose performances are especially stylish and smart. This fall for a limited run, Silven’s At the Illusionist’s Table returns for the fifth time…

A FRANK PORTRAYAL Perhaps the most famous quote from Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl is “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” However, these words were written before the Frank family was discovered in the secret annex and sent to concentration camps. Would Anne have had the same sentiments…

A DOCTORED PLAY NURSED BY JULIET STEVENSON Robert Icke’s adaptation of Viennese dramatist Arthur Schnitzler’s 1912 play, Professor Bernhardi might have been an interesting, if somewhat confusing, play about a hodgepodge of ideas if not for Juliet Stevenson, who emerges as a majestic and moving presence that presides over the stage like the Colossus of…

I HAVE A HUNCH YOU’LL LOVE THIS Victor Hugo published The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or Notre Dame de Paris in French, in 1831. Since that time the novel about Quasimodo, the hunchback and the much-loved Romani dancer, Esmeralda, has been adapted into silent films, talkies, animated films, television miniseries, plays and operas. In 1998,…

YES, ONE MORE TIME IS ONE MORE TIME ONE MORE TIME, BUT YOU’LL HAVE A GREAT TIME It well may be that there are no new plots left in the world of theater. But does that mean we have to keep seeing playwrights rewriting and directors reworking what other minds have created? In the past…

ARE WE EVER GOING TO SAY GOODBYE TO GOODBYE GIRL? The 1977 film The Goodbye Girl, written by Neil Simon and directed by Herbert Ross, was the first romantic comedy to earn over $100 million at the box office. So it should come as no surprise that it didn’t take long for Simon to turn…

A WARM SUMMER From the moment we first see Diana (Laura Linney) and Alice (Jessica Hecht), the two friends whose story is told in David Auburn’s new play, Summer, 1976, we know exactly who they are. Diana is dressed in a sleek black top and pants; Alice wears a light peasant dress. The two women…

A PUB CRAWL FROM FOLKLORE INTO FANTASY When a show is called The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, you can bet that it’s going to be a bit surreal, somewhat disturbing and ultimately captivating. The production that bears this name, which opened March 17 in The Club Car of The McKittrick Hotel (home of Sleep…