New York

HOW GOOD YOU GOT IT There’s an old saying that goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But is “fixing” always a bad thing? What if that fix is not about correcting what’s wrong but more about deepening, exploring, and re-emphasizing what’s right? The creative team behind the current Broadway revival of the ’70s…

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…

IT MAY BE ABOUT A MOVEMENT MORE THAN ITS PEOPLE, BUT A POWERHOUSE SCORE AND WINNING PERFORMANCES EMPOWER SUFFS There are several major conflicts in Suffs, the new Broadway musical directed by Leigh Silverman, with book, music and lyrics by Shaina Taub. Suffragists are battling the male hierarchy, which is not inclined to cede power…

The excellent Michael Stuhlbarg is continuously entertaining in Peter Morgan’s bio-play Patriots, leading the cast as Boris Berezovsky, a Russian-Jewish mathematician and businessman who became one of the original’”and most powerful’”oligarchs in Boris Yeltsin’s Russia of the 1990s, but who fell out of favor with Vladimir Putin, fled to Europe, and ended his life a…

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 COLOSSAL LEN CARIOU MAKES ANY DAY A GOOD DAY FOR TUESDAYS I have seen many a famous performer hit the stage in their senior years with a cabaret or theater performance, something I usually regret as my memories of the youthful vigorous actor is now replaced with a sad remembrance of a once-cherished star…

THE OUTSIDERS IS PURE THEATRICAL GOLD Neither a rehash of S.E. Hinton’s classic 1967 novel nor of the iconic 1983 film by Frances Ford Coppola, the stunning new musical The Outsiders, which opened tonight at Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, is recommended not just for the adaptation by Adam Rapp with Justin Levine but for…

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…