Areas We Cover
Categories
New York
-
Dance Recommendation: NAVY BLUE (Oona Doherty, The Joyce)
BELFAST-BASED RISING STAR MAKES JOYCE DEBUT WITH NAVY BLUE JUNE 4 – 9, 2024 Oona Doherty (photo Luca Truffarelli) The Joyce is hosting one of the most promising and vital voices in contemporary choreography, Oona Doherty, who makes her Joyce debut with the New York premiere of the evening-length work Navy Blue. This urgent appeal…
-
Opera Review: CARMEN (Metropolitan Opera House)
MOVING TO AMERICA’S HEARTLAND, CARRIE CARCKNELL FINDS THE HEART OF CARMEN Carmen is one of the most popular operas worldwide and has been part of the Metropolitan Opera’s repertoire since its first season in 1884. 102 years later, I first experienced the Met Opera as a grad student when I attended the opening night of…
-
Dance Review: MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE (North American Tour at New York City Center)
A SHOW THAT SENDS OUT AN S.O.S. Director-choreographer  Kate Prince, founder of London-based hip hop dance troupe  ZooNation, created a story about survival, hope, and love. Inspired by  Sting’s hits,  Message in a Bottle premiered on London’s West End in February 2020 and revived a year later before being interrupted by COVID. Produced by Sadler’s Wells  and  Universal Music UK, it…
-
Broadway Review: UNCLE VANYA (Lincoln Center Theater at the Vivian Beaumont)
YOU’LL SAY UNCLE Anton Chekhov’s 1897 Uncle Vanya is a comic tragedy and one of the hardest plays to stage because the main actors have a significant change of identity throughout the story, and the director has to make the transition into the dramatic part smooth and credible. In Heidi Schreck‘s version at Lincoln Center, the plot remains linear…
-
Broadway Review: ILLINOISE (St. James Theatre)
NEW DANCE-THEATER MAKES A BIG (ILLI)NOISE For countless millennial hipsters, Illinois (2005) is THE album of their coming of age, as well it should be. Now, New York City Ballet’s wunderkind Justin Peck (Spielberg’s West Side Story) and playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury (We Are Proud…) translate Sufjan Stevens‘ 2005 concept album into a wordless, glorious…
-
Off-Broadway Review: STAFF MEAL (Playwright’s Horizon)
A MEAL THAT’S HARD TO DIGEST Staff Meal at Playwrights Horizons is a light, surreal play with many points and no resolutions, intentionally unclear, written by Abe Koogler and directed by Morgan Green. Mina (Susannah Flood) and Ben (Greg Keller) are customers of the same coffee shop. They exchange head nods, a ‘hi’ or at most an awkward…
-
Broadway Review: THE HEART OF ROCK AND ROLL (The James Earl Jones Theatre)
IT WON’T WIN A PULITZER, BUT IT WILL REMIND YOU TO “BELIEVE IN LOVE” It is the fashion nowadays to present musicals with legitimate claims to sophisticated art, with elegant musical settings, deep emotional explorations, and sophisticated social and political analysis. None of this is bad, but what happened to good old clap your hands…
-
Broadway Review: HELL’S KITCHEN (Shubert Theatre)
SOMETHING WONDERFUL IS COOKING IN HELL’S KITCHEN What else can be said about Alicia Keys‘ new Broadway musical Hell’s Kitchen, that its recent thirteen Tony Award nominations, including one for Best Musical, haven’t already said (or implied)? Currently running at the Shubert Theatre and presented by multiple producing entities including The Public Theatre – the show…
-
Broadway Review LEMPICKA (Longacre Theatre)
REIGNITING TAMARA DE LEMPICKA [Editor’s Note: Even with tonal problems, I enjoyed Lempicka, but a crowded season won out, and the new musical officially closes on May 19, 2024. Therefore, we are republishing our review today, so you can catch it soon. Actor George Abud is remarkable; his performance is one of the biggest snubs…
-
Theater / Film Review: MACBETH (Ralph Fiennes & Indira Varma; screening in cinemas)
SOUND AND FURY INDEED “When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won,” says a Witch to introduce my favorite cursed play by the Bard, and I immediately crave medieval witches, prophecies, ghosts, and murders, but fearing a disappointment because of its length and complexity. Well, this powerful version adapted by Emily Burns starring…
-
Film Restoration and Screening: TIME OF THE HEATHEN [1961] (directed by Peter Kass)
4K Restoration Nationwide Screenings Include May 10 in NY at Film at Lincoln Center (Opening) and May 12 in LA at the American Cinematheque Emerging from the void, mysterious drifter Gaunt (The Sting’s John Heffernan) wanders the upstate countryside in a daze with only his bible for company. But after happening upon the murder of…
-
Broadway Review: THE WIZ (Marquis Theatre)
HOW GOOD YOU GOT IT There’s an old saying that goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But is “fixing” always a bad thing? What if that fix is not about correcting what’s wrong but more about deepening, exploring, and re-emphasizing what’s right? The creative team behind the current Broadway revival of the ’70s…
-
Broadway Review: AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE (Circle in the Square Theatre)
A PLAY FOR THE PEOPLE Written by Ibsen in 1882, An Enemy of the People is a powerful drama that reminds us, as a discouraging premonition, how people would go against truth and honesty in order to protect their personal interests. This version, adapted by playwright Amy Herzog and directed by her husband Sam Gold at Circle in the Square…
-
Broadway Review: SUFFS (Music Box Theatre)
IT MAY BE ABOUT A MOVEMENT MORE THAN ITS PEOPLE, BUT A POWERHOUSE SCORE AND WINNING PERFORMANCES EMPOWER SUFFS There are several major conflicts in Suffs, the new Broadway musical directed by Leigh Silverman, with book, music and lyrics by Shaina Taub. Suffragists are battling the male hierarchy, which is not inclined to cede power…
-
Broadway Review: PATRIOTS (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)
The excellent Michael Stuhlbarg is continuously entertaining in Peter Morgan’s bio-play Patriots, leading the cast as Boris Berezovsky, a Russian-Jewish mathematician and businessman who became one of the original’”and most powerful’”oligarchs in Boris Yeltsin’s Russia of the 1990s, but who fell out of favor with Vladimir Putin, fled to Europe, and ended his life a…
-
Concert / Event Review: KRONOS QUARTET & GHOST TRAIN ORCHESTRA PLAY MOONDOG (The Town Hall in New York City, Tuesday April 16, 2024 at 8pm)
IT’S SO GOOD THAT I’M HOWLING AT THE MOONDOG Moondog’s music is magical and timeless, it has the power to take us to faraway places. I am here to tell you about the extraordinary concert, Kronos Quartet & Ghost Train Orchestra Play Moondog, the collaboration between The Kronos Quartet, breaking down music boundaries as they…
-
Theater Interview: ETHAN JOSEPH (Now appearing at the Metropolitan Opera in “Fire Shut up in My Bones”)
A CHAMPION RETURNS In my first interview with Ethan Joseph a year ago, I wondered how a 12-year old boy would be able to top performing at the Met in Terence Blanchard’s Champion. On one of the biggest stages in New York and with the largest pit orchestra, onstage chorus, and production budgets, as well…
-
Off-Broadway Review: GRENFELL: IN THE WORDS OF SURVIVORS (National Theatre at St. Ann’s Warehouse)
THE FLAMES OF INJUSTICE Documentary theatre, a.k.a. docudrama, uses existing nonfiction sources to create works of performance that reenact historical events. My earliest recollection of docudrama was Twilight, Los Angeles 1992, written by performer Anna Deavere Smith from interviews with people involved in the L.A. Riots that followed the acquittal of the police who brutally…
-
Off-Broadway Review: STILL (DR2 Theatre near Union Square)
STILL WATERS RUN DEEP Lia Romeo‘s Still at the DR2 Theatre, is a moving, intimate play starring two confident actors, Jayne Atkinson as Helen and Tim Daly as Mark, who inhabit their roles with naturalism and nuance. Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt had only them in mind when she staged it because they almost never move, it’s all about their dialogue, and…
-
Broadway Review LEMPICKA (Longacre Theatre)
REIGNITING TAMARA DE LEMPICKA An epic story of entangled triangles is taking place at the Longacre Theatre, where a happily married young woman falls in love with another young woman, a sex worker. If that isn’t scandalous enough for 1920, let’s add that our heroine’s commitment is to her husband, her passion to her new lover,…
Search Articles
Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!
