New York

SOMETHING WICKED THAT WAY GOES No plague can kill a great show. It’s back. In a rare clash of film noir, performance art, an awesome murder mystery party, and Shakespeare, Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More is the ultimate voyeuristic thrill. Audience members don Venetian masks and explore the depths of the 1930s-style McKittrick Hotel in pursuit…

WHITE GIRL IN DANGER IS IN DANGER Broadway wunderkind  Michael R. Jackson  is back on the boards at  Second Stage’s Vineyard Theatre,  writing the book, music and lyrics for  his  latest  effort titled  White Girl in Danger. This new musical treads  similar  thematic ground as  his smash hit  A Strange Loop — which won the 2022 Tony for Best Musical and Jackson himself winning a Tony for…

THE BEST OSCAR GOES TO SEAN HAYES “It’d be nice to please everyone but I thought it would be more interesting to have a point of view.” The incomparable Oscar Levant is the subject of the hit play which opened tonight at the Belasco Theatre. If you are not that familiar with Levant, don’t fret,…

YOU’LL BE HOOKED The title says it all. Based on the play Peter Pan by JM Barrie, Peter Pan Goes Wrong by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields is about a stage production of the children’s classic that goes wrong. Horribly wrong. Hilariously wrong. Hurtfully wrong. Just wrong. Currently playing at the Ethel Barrymore…

WHAT’S SO WONDERFUL? THIS REVIVAL OF WOMAN OF THE YEAR I’m jealous of New York Musical lovers. If they want to catch a rarely produced musical from the “golden age” of Broadway (the dates of “golden age” tend to blur), they have the J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company. And unlike the Los Angeles companies which…

HOW DO YOU CATCH A TIGER BY THE TAIL? STAGING. The eye-popping special effects of Life of Pi are reason enough to see this show, which opened this week at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. Yes, there are a plethora of perfect performances, but no one should miss the elegant, effective, energizing design elements. This is…

WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS FAT HAM Ah, the Father/Son relationship. Tough when bad and often difficult even when pop and junior love each other. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, adapted with delightful quirkiness into Fat Ham  by playwright James Ijames, the young prince is so enamored of his recently deceased father, King Hamlet, he refers to…

THERE’S PLENTY OF GREAT PRANCIN’ BUT IT’S A HEAD-SCRATCHIN’ DANCIN’ There’s whole lotta dancing in the updated, Broadway revival of Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’, closing May 14, 2023 at The Music Box. Exciting dancing. Lyrical dancing. Athletic dancing. Sensuous dancing. Joyful dancing. Dancing full of technique and isolation and articulation and precision and extension. Performed by…

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…

PROCTOR BY PROXY In playwright Talene Monahon’s new play The Good John Proctor, John Proctor doesn’t actually appear. He is integral to the plot and is certainly referenced but there is no physical character named John Proctor. So he is there but, at the same time, he isn’t — which is an apt description of…

ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY Announces 2023-2024 Season   ON BROADWAY I NEED THAT  starring  DANNY DEVITO  at the American Airlines Theatre HOME  at the American Airlines Theatre (one additional Broadway production will be announced at a later date) OFF-BROADWAY THE REFUGE PLAYS  at the Laura Pels Theatre, in association with New York Theatre Workshop COVENANT  at the Black Box Theatre JONAH  at the Laura…

Audible Theater Announces Four Performance Extension of Drinking In America Now Playing Through Thursday, April 13 Only At Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre Audible Theater  has announced four additional performances of  Drinking in America, written by three-time Obie Award winner  Eric Bogosian, starring  Andre Royo (The Wire), and directed by Mark Armstrong. The edgy, entertaining, thought-provoking show opened last night…

NOW AND ZEN Coming out of the Baryshnikov Arts Center after watching its current offering The Hunting Gun, I overheard a woman ask her husband what he thought of the show. Good, but long, he said, which pretty much mirrored my reaction to this mostly Japanese-language production based on the novella by Yasushi Inoue. Adapted…

A NEW SONDHEIM MUSICAL ANNOUNCED; LET THE PRAYERS TO THE THEATER GODS COMMENCE. A few months before he passed, Stephen Sondheim told Stephen Colbert during an interview that he was working on a show. And here I thought that the musical he was writing with David Ives known as Square One  had been scrapped. Not so,…