New York

AS HARMLESS AS A PICNIC Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Picnic is the perfect show to take your mom to. I know because I did. An excellent cast – which includes Ellen Burstyn, Mare Winningham, and Reed Birney – solid staging, topnotch stagecraft elements, and a well-crafted, thoughtful script full…

BREAKING THE LANGUAGE BARRIER The French expression “C’est du Chinois” means “It’s all Greek to me” – or, literally translated, “It’s Chinese.” The phrase is typically flippant and dismissive of cultural differences, marking a refusal to engage a linguistic barrier. Yet the play C’est du Chinois, conceptualized and directed by Edit Kaldor, creates a rather…

MULTI-DIMENSIONAL The virtuosic Fleur Elise Noble (performer, director, and set designer) constructs a world of artistic possibilities in 2 Dimensional Life of Her. Across a series of flat surfaces – the shadow of a woman standing atop a chair, large panels spanning the back of the theater and stage right, sheets and signs and crumpled…

NOTHING HOLLOW ABOUT IT Is it possible for a person of color to have a “neutral narrative”: A story untainted by race or gender, disentangled from the ghosts of the past, unaffected by theory and –isms? Is it possible for a person of color to have hollow roots, and if so, is an empty heritage…

ASSAULTED If you’re looking to experience the shell shock and the trauma that soldiers undergo during wartime and its aftermath, then head on down to the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University to see David T. Little’s operatic Soldier Songs.   But please heed the warning.   This multimedia event is not your garden-variety…

LAURIE METCALF BELONGS IN THE OTHER PLACE In The Other Place, Sharr White’s riveting and affective play, Laurie Metcalf delivers a poignant and masterfully crafted performance as Juliana, a neurologist and holder of a billion-dollar patent, whose life suddenly starts crumbing before her eyes. The show begins with her – confident, sophisticated, impregnable – lecturing…

A POWERFUL WATER BY THE SPOONFUL CONTAINS CONFUSION BY THE CUPFUL Quiara Alegria Hudes’ 2012 Pulitzer-Prize winning Water by the Spoonful is a bold and provocative drama that uses cyber technology to illustrate the woes of addiction.   Hudes – book writer for In the Heights – draws from true events and real-life family members to…

CHEKHOV REINVENTED, SORT OF The whimsical premise behind Kristen Kosmas’ brilliantly conceived and deftly executed creation There There is this: Christopher Walken, while touring Russia in a one-man show as Solyony from Chekhov’s Three Sisters, falls off a ladder and is unable to perform. When a proofreader named Karen (the dynamite Ms. Kosmas), is urged…

THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION MAY LACK RHYTHM, BUT THIS IS ONE HILARIOUS AND UPLIFTING BARBER If you’re looking to usher in the Holiday season with some good entertainment, then look no further than the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.   Following a traditional commedia dell’arte structure, this delightful French comedy is amusing…

WORKING TOO HARD The actors mingle around onstage dressing room tables as the audience takes their seats. The stage manager (Rebecca McBee) calls cues from a corner upstage. Even the band, led by the vibrant Alex Lacamoire, is partially visible atop a platform on the industrial set, designed by Beowulf Borit. It feels appropriate that…

A PENNY’S WORTH In the mood for some light-hearted, endearing entertainment that will make your face and heart smile?   Then get yourself a ticket to Barry Kleinbort’s (direction, book, music and lyrics) 13 Things about Ed Carpolotti, a new one-act cabaret based on a monologue from Jeffrey Hatcher’s Three Viewings.   Although the plot introduction takes…

UNFULFILLED WANTS David Mamet’s latest dramatic work, The Anarchist, begins as abruptly as it ends, but despite the jarring effects, there is a good reason for the sharpness of these moments.   Jeff Croiter’s lighting cues punctuate the first and final scenes like black and white markers for what is otherwise grey, nebulous and “opaque” material,…

FRISK ME AGAIN The hubbub in the lobby of the Public Theater late last Friday night suggested we were in for a dynamic show. Frisk Me: The Songs of Max Vernon packed Joe’s Pub with one of the most energized audiences of friends and fans I have ever seen at this venue, and the few…

I THINK I HEARD BELLINI TURNING IN HIS GRAVE Imagine yourself sitting tied to a chair in a stuffy, dark room with a very dull senile old man who talks on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about nonsense, and you have imagined the experience…

HALF & HALF Australian Made Entertainment’s new production of Andrew Bovell’s well-crafted relationship thriller Speaking in Tongues really gets going in the second act. The play, directed by Bryn Boice, tells the stories of nine individuals (played by four actors) whose lives Mr. Bovell cleverly intertwines, giving us a cross-section of problems that arise in…