New York

A DROP-DEAD DELIGHT Delightful in an over-the-top yet grounded and sympathetic portrayal of Idris Seabright, a well-off spinster obsessed with memories of her long-gone Latin lover, Everett Quinton is the jewel in Joe Brancato’s sharp and whimsical staging of Erasmus Fenn’s hilarious melodrama Drop Dead Perfect. The entire four-person cast is a joy to watch,…

THEATER AS A TEMPLE The Flea Theater commissioned 48 different playwrights to contribute short dramatic pieces to this tremendous production, which basically recounts all the narratives in the Bible from before the beginning of the universe to after its end.   The cycle’s list of authors contains newbies to some unexpectedly major names, from David Henry…

RAISING THE CLOWN BAR Did the TV series It give you nightmares for decades?   Does the art of John Wayne Gacy make you tremble?   Does dear old Bozo make you break out in hives?   If you suffer from coulrophobia – a fear of clowns – then Clown Bar, a site-specific production full of energy and…

STORMY ROMANCE It is sometimes the case that the plays that seem the simplest – three characters, a few dusty flats, a tiny, shoe-box set in a miniscule theater somewhere on the 12th floor of a building off of Times Square – is the work that has the most depth.   The Taste of It, John…

WHEN THE SAINTS COME DANCING IN Here’s a charming revue that sets to song and dance the words of the great poet Gertrude Stein, mistress of new language and one of the tremendous free spirits of the 20th century. If I were a critic of the heft and depth of, say, Stage and Cinema’s own…

PRO AND (EX-)CON In telling his true-life tale about being convicted of attempted murder and released following a hefty prison term, Joe Assadourian is proof that you can be a crook and still be a tremendously talented actor.   And, really, I don’t suppose anyone should be surprised at this idea.   Acting is merely the art…

RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE AS SURREAL BURLESQUE Delightful wouldn’t be a word I’d expect to use when describing a Robert Wilson show. But The Old Woman, adapted by Darryl Pinckney from an absurdist story by Daniil Kharms, and performed by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe, is just that. Whimsical, darkly funny, and disquieting throughout, Wilson’s striking spectacle…

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…

HALF AND HALF Kim Wall delivers a brilliant performance as Barry, an aging municipal employee, in Alan Ayckbourn’s Arrivals and Departures, part of the Brits Off-Broadway Festival at 59E59 Theaters. Mr. Wall carries the show, and although surrounded by a fine cast, without him there’s not much to see here. Still, the first act of…

A SHOW THAT DESERVES AN EXCLAMATION POINT! Broadway’s recent bumper crop of musicals has provided spoof-meister Gerard Alessandrini a mother load to mine in the latest installment of his well-established, venomous valentines to the Great White Way, Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging! Performed by a four member cast of actor-chameleons (Carter Calvert, Mia Gentile, Marcus…

BORED TO DEATH In Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair’s ill-conceived two-hander musical comedy Murder for Two, lively performances and Scott Schwartz’s energetic direction are not enough to overcome a book that goes out of its way to avoid suspense and is so full of corn that I found myself squirming between yawns: After a novelist…

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE DANCED Move over Evita, there’s another Queen of Hearts in town. And she likes diamonds too. I’m talking about Imelda Marcos’”she of the thousand pairs of shoes’”who is the centerpiece of a dazzling new pop operetta by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. It’s called Here Lies Love, which is what Imelda…

NOW THIS IS HOW YOU ADAPT A PLAY In 1859 Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon opened in New York City to much acclaim. The plot of this suspenseful melodrama centers on George, a young man of Southern birth but liberal education and outlook, who returns from Paris to his uncle’s plantation upon learning of the old…

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…

NOW SHOW ME HOW TO CHEW IT As a critic I have a confession to make: when reading a play for fun I usually skim over the stage directions. I generally don’t care how many chairs are in a room or what color the rug is or whether what’s in the corner is a dresser…

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…

STRINDBERG ON PROZAC Throughout my tenure with Stage and Cinema I have criticized a number of productions for staging foreign plays too literally, insisting that it is misguided for directors who don’t have sufficient understanding of the world the playwright is working with to try and recreate it – better to reinvent it as something…

SOME ARE TKO’S, SOME SHOULD BE BRIEFER The first play featured in this annual showcase of ten-minute plays by emerging writers,  An Eclectic Evening of Shorts VII: Boxers and Briefs, is Margo Hammond’s humorous Mistress Marlene, directed by Alex Dmitriev. Bill, an electrician (a disarming Tim Barker), arrives at his elderly client Sandra’s (a naturalistic Susanne…

BOOZE AND BARD In ShakesBEER, NYC’s Original Shakespearean Pub Crawl, New York Shakespeare Exchange members perform ten-minute scenes from four Shakespeare plays in as many bars over the course of three hours. The locations change with every incarnation of the show; the most recent one was hosted by The Liberty, Peter Dillon’s Pub, Galway Pub,…