New York

HELLO, GORGEOUS Jonathan Tolkin’s  keen and tremendously funny new show Buyer & Cellar, performed by Michael Urie, imagines what it would be like for Alex More, a young gay man struggling to make it as an actor in Hollywood, to find himself working in the artificial mall Barbara Streisand built in the basement of her “rustic”…

GOING POSTAL OVER NEW YORK Soaked to the skin and wrestling with a flimsy umbrella, I splashed across Eighth Avenue while reading the inscription on the James A. Farley Post Office, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Well, here was…

UNDER THE SPELL OF MATILDA Just as author Roald Dahl’s child-heroine “Matilda” is a magical mix of unexpected brilliance, youthful exuberance and solid common sense — so is the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new musical adaptation, Matilda the Musical. Employing the familiar storyline of the discarded child on a quest to find a home and family…

LOVE, SEX AND POETRY Thoroughly delightful and hilarious throughout, Dirty Great Love Story, which is part of the Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters, is just what its admittedly clunky title implies. Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna, who together wrote, rhymed and perform the show under Pia Furtado’s direction, come out onto the stage,…

REASONS TO SEE THIS SHOW Neil LaBute’s explosive and wildly funny new comedy reasons to be happy, which Mr. LaBute also directs, starts off with a bang as Steph (Jenna Fischer), having stalked her ex-boyfriend Greg (Josh Hamilton) in the parking lot of Trader Joe’s, yells at him for starting up a romantic relationship with…

SOME PLAYS ARE “FORGOTTEN” FOR A REASON Part of the Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters, Finborough Theatre’s classic staging of J.B. Priestley’s Cornelius, under Sam Yates’ expert direction, has rich performances and a textured period set by David Woodhead that makes one nostalgic for mechanical typewriters and landlines. Unfortunately, these elements are unable…

LOVE AS A MYTHICAL BEAST Compelling performances and Cat Parker’s surefooted direction overcome budgetary and other constraints associated with short-run, theater-festival productions, making Jenny Connell Davis’s Dragon, which is part of the Planet Connections Theater Festivity, a worthwhile and at times quite moving theatrical experience. Often intentionally ambiguous, and combining the allegorical with the literary,…

CHILD’S PLAY Adapted by Jeremy Bloom from J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy and A Little White Bird, Peter/Wendy, which Mr. Bloom also directs, is a charming, semi-interactive theatrical experiment in which a group of delightful young performers in pajamas play out a retelling of the story of Peter Pan (John Charles McLaughlin) and Wendy…

A CURE FOR INSOMNIA Dan Frost’s evocative performance as the artist Roger Hilton isn’t enough to save Botallack O’Clock, written and directed by Eddie Elks and currently being performed as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival, from being an excruciatingly boring and drama-free 70 minutes. According to legend Hilton hardly left his bed during…

SOMETHING WICKED THAT WAY GOES In a rare clash of film noir, 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 of the dubious characters of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, who run amuck throughout….

SKETCHY BLUEPRINT The great John Turturro stars as the architect Halvard Solness in David Edgar’s translation of Ibsen’s enigmatic chef-d’oeuvre The Master Builder, which is currently being performed at BAM’s Harvey Theater under the direction of Andrei Belgrader. Mr. Belgrader chooses to take what might be called a more traditional approach to staging the work,…

A PLAY CANNOT LIVE ON CONCEPT ALONE Nicole Pearce’s lighting and Katie Down’s sound design and musical compositions, which are works of art in themselves, go a long way in helping make The Play Company’s production of Roland Schimmelpfennig’s The Golden Dragon (translated by David Tushingham) a dynamic and exciting, if not completely satisfying, spectacle….

WHAT MAKES A FAMILY What makes a family? What keeps one together? And what do you do when you’re stuck in one that doesn’t fit in with how you want yourself or your life to be? These are the questions Bob Glaudini appears to be trying to answer with his slice-of-life drama A Family for…

THE RIGHT GIRL IN THE WRONG VENUE Created by Neil Bartlett and Jessica Walker, The Girl I Left Behind Me – which is part of the Brits Off Broadway festival – is a tribute to British and American male impersonators of decades past, in which Ms. Walker, dressed in tails and switching out hats and…

WHITE-COLLAR BULLYING Mike Bartlett’s play Bull begins with a team of three white-collar salespeople, Tony (Adam James), Isobel (Eleanor Matsuura) and Thomas (Sam Throughton) awaiting the arrival of Carter (Neil Stuke), their supervisor, who will interview each of them and then decide which one he will let go. What ensues is Tony and Isobel’s systematic…

ALMOST MAGIC Although the magic tricks in Bullet Catch are not so much ends in themselves as they are tools used to help explore the show’s themes, the effectiveness of the play  – named after the occasionally fatal trick first developed in the 17th century, in which the magician attempts to catch a bullet fired from…

SEEING ISN’T FEELING Blythe Duff and Andrew Scott-Ramsay deliver rich, convincing performances in David Harrower’s worthwhile if not completely satisfying play Good with People. Part of the Brits Off Broadway festival, currently at 59E59 Theaters, this two-person show concerns itself with the interaction between Helen (Ms. Duff), the middle-aged manager of a small hotel in…

A SHOWCASE FOR EMERGING ARTISTS When watching Artistic New Directions’ presentation of An Eclectic Evening of Shorts: Boxers and Briefs VI, a collection of six ten-minute plays, plus three short improvisational pieces, one must keep in mind that these are not so much completed works as they are works-in-progress, exercises that give playwrights, directors and…

GO ASK ALICE “Do you take dictation?” the gentleman asked as he gently closed the door to the study. Seated at an antique rolltop desk, I responded with an eager “Yes,” picked up a gold pen and began to write on the notepaper he placed in front of me. “Dear Alice:” This man, I realized…

SUGAR RUSH An adorable piece of clever and very funny fluff, Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike takes spoonfuls of ingredients from Chekhov’s plays and mixes them into an American-comedy batter. The result is a very sweet, sugary desert: exhilarating and tasty but innutritious. Vanya (David Hyde Pierce) and Sonia (Kristine Nielsen)…