New York

SEE THE MOVIE Imagine John Boorman’s film Deliverance staged, “panties” scene and all, as a piece of dinner theater, with all the performers looking very serious and projecting their voices, the way they believe real men should, as they mime handling things like paddles and bows, and describe scenes whose drama is supposed to be…

WARM TUB The lights come up on a couple, Helene (Hannah Bos) and Derek (Paul Thureen), reading in a Jacuzzi, inside a cozy Colorado skiing cabin one cold winter evening sometimes in the 1980s. They’ve made themselves at home, yet a certain unmoored quality about them suggests that they don’t quite belong. Suddenly a young…

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…

TRUTH IN LIES “I exaggerate,” states Lauren (Jessica Ranville) at the beginning of Lying, which gets a delightful staging by Jessica Burr and her company Blessed Unrest at the Interart Theatre. Matt Opatrny’s exciting and intelligent adaptation of Lauren Slater’s Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir follows Lauren from age ten into her twenties. She recounts her…

TEMPESTUOUS AND TAME The Tempest offers a kaleidoscope of intrigue, betrayals, political shenanigans, murderous intent, monsters, masques, mayhem, magic, and romance. Julie Taymor’s disappointing 2010 big-screen, big-budget version proved that head-spinning CGI-candy is not enough to make all of these ingredients satisfying. Working with a stripped-down stage at La MaMa, director Karin Coonrod puts her…

AN UNCANNY PERFORMANCE FROM ALEX PODULKE In Thomas Gibbons’ Uncanny Valley, directed by Tom Dugdale, Alex Podulke plays Julian, a sophisticated artificial human, who was created for the purpose of having his mind implanted with a dying billionaire’s consciousness in order that the billionaire may live on. Claire (Barbara Kingsley) is the neuroscientist tasked with…

SHOW ME THE MONEY Two couples are having aperitifs at a luxurious home in the Hollywood Hills (sexy stylish set by Derek McLane). They are Steve (Fred Weller), an aging action superstar; Missy (Gia Crovatin), his very young and ditsy wife of one year; Karen (Elizabeth Reaser), a movie star who’s quickly approaching middle-age and…

WHEN BEING A STARVING WRITER IS NO LONGER ROMANTIC Austin Pendleton’s breathtaking performance and Ira Lewis’s penetrating script make Chinese Coffee, with all its flaws, a most worthwhile outing. In fact, at $18 a ticket, this show, directed by Louise Lasser, is all but mandatory viewing for lovers of personal, intimate theater, as well as…

THE UNKNOWABLE WORLD THAT WE LIVE IN Is it possible for true love to be unrequited? Or, to put it another way, is it possible for unrequited love to be true? These  questions, on the surface as deceptively simple as Ivan Viripaev’s story-telling framework, are at the core of his play Illusions, which uses the queries…

THE GOOD, THE LOST, AND THE VAIN Owen Gould Davis, Sr.’s thoughtful and masterfully crafted 1923 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Icebound, which explores Puritan vanity and its many ironies, gets an admirable staging by Alex Roe and his all-around excellent cast at the Metropolitan Playhouse. Though not particularly startling or revolutionary, the show is good, solid…

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…

LOVE IS A MANY-SPLINTERED THING It’s after dark in Westchester County in 1976. Do you know where your parents are? Still under the spell of an ebullient consciousness raising meeting, two suburban Moms are sharing a joint and flirting.   Joyce Horowitz (Christine Verleny) explains the marijuana was a gift for her big 4-0; she’s a…

A CABARET SHOW THAT GOES FOR BAROQUE Mae West, the sage and sybarite from Brooklyn, used to say, “Let joy be unrefined,” a point of view that also suits Austin McCormick, artistic director and choreographer of Company XIV.   His latest extravaganza Rococo Rouge retools the roisterous risk-taking revelry he’s known for: bare skin, sultry ballet,…

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…

ASPHYXIATING Neither the excellent quartet playing quality pieces that are at times rousing, nor Karl Ruckdeschel’s lovely period costumes, are enough to make Solitary Light, with music and lyrics by Randy Sharp and Paul Carbonara, a tolerable experience. With an artless libretto that is sentimental and always on-the-nose, the lack of a meaningful, or even…

A BIO-DRAMA THAT WORKS “Of course I care (what she thinks), I hate her,” says a character in Lauren Gunderson’s Bauer, a San Francisco Playhouse production about the German artist Rudolf Bauer, who painted during the first half of the 20th century. It is one of many lines that pop in a play which, though…

SMOKIN’ The premise of Kim Davies’ new play Smoke, that two strangers, a young man and woman, who independently come to the kitchen to have a cigarette while a friendly S&M sex party is taking place in the rest of the apartment, and who wind up having a meaningful interaction, is like a minefield with…

MISS JULIE’S OFFSPRING In 2012 the Scandinavian American Theater Company commissioned four playwrights to each write a sort of riff on Strindberg’s Miss Julie. The result is the four short plays that make up Bastards of Strindberg, a show so full of vitality and charisma that it often  overcomes its failings. Strindberg’s Miss Julie begins on…

A SWORD THAT’S HARD TO SWALLOW The best thing I can say about Kari Floren’s new play Voices of Swords is that it seems to be well-intentioned (it’s odd that the poster proclaims “new” when the play was produced and reviewed in 2008). Unfortunately, sitting through it feels like Ms. Floren and director Eve Brandstein…

A TASTY PUNCH NEEDS TO BE SPIKED Flowing dialogue, skillful performances, and Audrey Alford’s solid direction make Micheline Auger’s banal and predictable Donkey Punch, a play which attempts to explore the romantic relationships of two yupster couples in an ultra-contemporary setting, watchable and occasionally entertaining. Sexually carnivorous attorney Kareena (a wound up Cleo Gray) sets…