New York

AN ADDRESS TO REMEMBER Billy Crystal finds humor and humanity after a terrible year Home is not simply the place where people live but the emotional world they create together. When fire takes the home where a couple has lived for almost half a century, raised their children, and welcomed their grandchildren, the loss extends…

ELEVEN PERFORMERS, ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES A production so enchanting it wins over this skeptic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which recently opened at The Public Theater, is a cross between Come From Away and Sting’s The Last Ship, though this story unfolds in a Cornish fishing village on the coast of Great Britain. An ensemble…

LOVE, LIES, AND ALGORITHMS Deft direction and strong performances elevate an inventive premise If you could build the perfect romantic companion, made exclusively to make you happy, would you? Such a machine would need to learn human behavior by watching humans in intimate relationships. Such a machine might be able to observe and memorize human…

A DICKENS OF A DELIGHT A few shortcomings scarcely diminish this tuneful Dickens adaptation It’s a long story. It began in the mid-1800s as writer Charles Dickens’s lengthy episodic tale of a fellow named David Copperfield, with decidedly autobiographical elements, one chunk parceled out at a time, in 19 segments over the course of 18…

LITTLE ADO ABOUT NOTHING Everyone talks, nobody listens, and the results are wonderfully funny In a time of newspeak, disinformation, and alternate facts, Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist play, The Bald Soprano, has special significance. Indeed, The Resident Acting Company’s production, directed by Bradford Cover, is not only timely; it is also sharp, funny, and sparkling. Ionesco’s…

THE PEN IS MIGHTIER Duncan Sheik’s seductive score elevates a sumptuous but emotionally uneven musical Reminiscent of the immersive experience of the most recent revival of Cabaret, which transformed the entire August Wilson Theatre into the Kit Kat Klub, Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen similarly turns the main space within the Culture Club into “The Night…

THE COST OF CONVICTION Marilu Henner and Shannon Purser face off in a provocative debate that takes too long to get started Matthew Freeman’s new play, The Ask, now running at Off-Broadway’s Theater 555, begins with a seemingly straightforward encounter: Greta (Marilu Henner), a longtime donor to the ACLU, is meeting with Tanner (Shannon Purser),…

A GHOST OF A CHANCE TO KEEP YOUR COOL An inventive binaural ghost story gets under your skin—and into your ears—with unsettling intimacy Written and directed by Jamie Armitage in collaboration with sound designers Ben and Max Ringham, A Ghost in Your Ear at Audible Theater’s Minetta Lane Theatre offers a ghost story literally in…

THE ART OF CREATION, THE PAIN OF LONGING Mfoniso Udofia’s inventive new play finds extraordinary theatrical expression in a woman’s struggle with motherhood, grief, and self-forgiveness The world premiere of creation stories and all the important importants at Lincoln Center Theater begins with a nightmare. Haunted by the Raffia, a Nigerian earth spirit of creation,…

A FAMILY AFFAIR, WITH LOVE AND RESERVATIONS Ryan J. Haddad’s affectionate tribute to his uncle celebrates the power of theater, though its homespun approach limits its emotional impact Good Time Charlie, which opened tonight at The Public Theater, is a loving tribute from playwright Ryan J. Haddad to his uncle Charlie, an older gay man…

FRANKLY, IT’S A SLAM An outrageous Afro-Latin hip-hop reinvention of Anne Frank goes gleefully where you can’t believe it dares to go Wait, what? Slam Frank, which opened at the Orpheum Theatre on October 4, is an “Anne-Frank Afro-Latin Hip-Hop Musical”? Its logo is the silhouette of a young girl wearing the yellow Jewish star,…

BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP Jocelyn Bioh gives the familiar mean-girl story a funny, painful twist in a terrific Broadway production The “mean girls” trope, that group of popular girls usually led by a demanding, beautiful, powerful yet damaged girl, is at the center of many a successful entertainment. From Heathers to Carrie to Hairspray…

CHERRY PICKING Simon Stone’s riveting Korean adaptation keeps Chekhov’s plot while stripping away much of what made it Chekhov “Chekhov, everywhere, all at once!” That’s what it has been like these past two seasons. Today’s theatre artists are reimagining Chekhov’s plays in new and surprising ways. Thomas Ostermeier’s The Seagull in London featured an acrobatic…

NO COUPLE IS AN ISLAND Joshua Owen’s warm and funny tragicomedy finds two marriages weathering storms of very different kinds A marriage can be its own world, with inside jokes, shared memories, and shared rapport. In Joshua Owen’s Human Things, making its world premiere at the West End Theatre, a couple’s world is their own…

WHEN DREAMS GET A SECOND ACT Nearly two decades later, Joey Arias and Basil Twist’s downtown fantasia returns with its imagination, naughtiness, and joyful strangeness intact Back in 2008, when iPhones were a year old and Instagram might’ve been a cookie mix, Arias With A Twist burst onto the downtown New York theater scene. Part…

AN AMERICAN STORY GETS A NEW LIFE Lynn Nottage, John Legend, Whitney White, and Adrienne Warren take on a story that has been provoking America for nearly a century Some source material arrives onstage carrying more baggage than most shows acquire in a lifetime. Imitation of Life has had nearly a century to accumulate its…

THE TROUBLE WITH PLAYING IT SAFE Fine performances keep an overloaded family drama on solid ground It is ironic how some wealthy folks convince themselves that they can trust luxurious bunkers with thick walls and armed guards to survive the collapse of society, without thinking that hired helpers are human. Even a modest, hidden bunker…