Paulanne Simmons

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…

NOT BAD, CINDERELLA These days Prince Charmings are not in style. Nor are Fairy Godmothers. So it’s pretty hard to expect adults to take stories like Cinderella very seriously. Nevertheless, the old fairytales seem to still hold a certain attraction, especially for musical theater. Thus we have Into the Woods, Once Upon a Mattress, and…

WANDERING WRITING The Wanderers, the new play by Anna Ziegler (Boy, A Delicate Ship, The Last Match, Another Way Home) now making its New York premiere with The Roundabout Theatre Company, comprises three intersecting stories. The first story takes place in the past. It’s about the marriage of orthodox Jews Schmuli (Dave Klasko) and Esther…

SHAKING UP SHAKESPEARE Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, only 25 of which are included in Berliner Ensemble’s Shakespeare’s Sonnets. But that is more than enough to make for an exciting theatrical event. What’s more, the sonnets are accompanied by Robert Wilson’s surreal staging and a score by singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright. All this should make for a…

A MERRY APPROACH TO A MELANCHOLY CLASSIC These days when directors revive a classic, they have to decide whether their approach will be either to modernize the play or mount it as a period piece, true to the spirit of the times in which it was created. Sometimes, as in the case of the The…

DRAMA IN THE MARKETPLACE Trade Practices, which launches HERE’s 2014-2015 season, takes the audience on a tour into the bowels of the corporate world where deals are negotiated, promises are broken, and fortunes are made and lost. It was created by director Kristin Marting (HERE artistic director) and set designer David Evans Morris, who were…

MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING YOU WANT TO SEE If one were only to see Shakespeare as produced by The Public Theater at the Delacorte Theater, it would be easy to come to the conclusion that all of the Bard’s plays take place in bucolic settings. This is due to the brilliantly inventive way that The…

OUR HEARTS BELONG TO MARY, BUT THE REVUE ABOUT HER LIFE NEEDS REINVENTING The legendary actress and singer Mary Martin would have been 100 years old today, and to celebrate this centennial York Theatre Company is presenting the world premiere of Stephen Cole’s Inventing Mary Martin: The Revue of a Lifetime. The show, a tribute…

SOME OF THE GLITZ WORKS, BUT BULLETS BASICALLY SHOOTS BLANKS In keeping with the growing trend of turning films into Broadway musicals, Douglas McGrath and Woody Allen’s 1994 comedy, Bullets Over Broadway, has arrived at the St. James Theatre. Director and choreographer Susan Stroman’s jukebox musical uses songs from the 20s and 30s with additional…

A FAMOUS LITERARY FEUD MAKES GREAT DRAMA In 1980, in a television interview with Dick Cavett, novelist and literary critic Mary McCarthy made an especially biting comment about her longtime adversary and fellow writer, playwright and memoirist Lillian Hellman, saying that “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” Unfortunately, Hellman was…

AN UNHAPPY COUPLE – UNHAPPY IN ITS OWN WAY Stockholm Syndrome is a form of traumatic bonding in which hostages develop an irrational sympathy for their captors. The term refers to a robbery in Stockholm in which bank employees who were held hostage in a vault for six days not only rejected government assistance, but…