New York

HOW DO YOU CATCH A TIGER BY THE TAIL? STAGING. The eye-popping special effects of Life of Pi are reason enough to see this show, which opened this week at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. Yes, there are a plethora of perfect performances, but no one should miss the elegant, effective, energizing design elements. This is…

WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS FAT HAM Ah, the Father/Son relationship. Tough when bad and often difficult even when pop and junior love each other. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, adapted with delightful quirkiness into Fat Ham  by playwright James Ijames, the young prince is so enamored of his recently deceased father, King Hamlet, he refers to…

THERE’S PLENTY OF GREAT PRANCIN’ BUT IT’S A HEAD-SCRATCHIN’ DANCIN’ There’s whole lotta dancing in the updated, Broadway revival of Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’, closing May 14, 2023 at The Music Box. Exciting dancing. Lyrical dancing. Athletic dancing. Sensuous dancing. Joyful dancing. Dancing full of technique and isolation and articulation and precision and extension. Performed by…

A PUB CRAWL FROM FOLKLORE INTO FANTASY When a show is called The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, you can bet that it’s going to be a bit surreal, somewhat disturbing and ultimately captivating. The production that bears this name, which opened March 17 in The Club Car of The McKittrick Hotel (home of Sleep…

NOT BAD, CINDERELLA These days Prince Charmings are not in style. Nor are Fairy Godmothers. So it’s pretty hard to expect adults to take stories like Cinderella very seriously. Nevertheless, the old fairytales seem to still hold a certain attraction, especially for musical theater. Thus we have Into the Woods, Once Upon a Mattress, and…

PROCTOR BY PROXY In playwright Talene Monahon’s new play The Good John Proctor, John Proctor doesn’t actually appear. He is integral to the plot and is certainly referenced but there is no physical character named John Proctor. So he is there but, at the same time, he isn’t — which is an apt description of…

ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY Announces 2023-2024 Season   ON BROADWAY I NEED THAT  starring  DANNY DEVITO  at the American Airlines Theatre HOME  at the American Airlines Theatre (one additional Broadway production will be announced at a later date) OFF-BROADWAY THE REFUGE PLAYS  at the Laura Pels Theatre, in association with New York Theatre Workshop COVENANT  at the Black Box Theatre JONAH  at the Laura…

Audible Theater Announces Four Performance Extension of Drinking In America Now Playing Through Thursday, April 13 Only At Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre Audible Theater  has announced four additional performances of  Drinking in America, written by three-time Obie Award winner  Eric Bogosian, starring  Andre Royo (The Wire), and directed by Mark Armstrong. The edgy, entertaining, thought-provoking show opened last night…

NOW AND ZEN Coming out of the Baryshnikov Arts Center after watching its current offering The Hunting Gun, I overheard a woman ask her husband what he thought of the show. Good, but long, he said, which pretty much mirrored my reaction to this mostly Japanese-language production based on the novella by Yasushi Inoue. Adapted…

A NEW SONDHEIM MUSICAL ANNOUNCED; LET THE PRAYERS TO THE THEATER GODS COMMENCE. A few months before he passed, Stephen Sondheim told Stephen Colbert during an interview that he was working on a show. And here I thought that the musical he was writing with David Ives known as Square One  had been scrapped. Not so,…

PERFORMERS AND PRODUCTION PUMP UP THE OPAQUE PLOT OF PERICLES Pericles by William Shakespeare is a play that is probably ripe for an HBO adaptation. It deals with incest, death, redemption, palaces, brothels, lies, scheming mothers, weak fathers, assassins, purity, evil, pirates, kings, storms, princes, magic, Divine intervention, threatened rape and some very convenient coincidences….

HAVE A PIECE OF PI Based on one of the best-loved works of fiction – winner of the Man Booker Prize, selling over fifteen million copies worldwide – Yann Martel’s best-selling novel Life of Pi is now Lolita Chakrabarti’s dazzling, breath-taking new theatrical adaptation of an epic journey of endurance and hope: After a cargo…

ON AND OFF THE RIGHT TRACK Ever been on public transportation and wondered about the people seated around you? Not just whether or not they are nut-jobs or pose any physical threat but who they really are? What they are dealing with? What you would say to them? Could they one day be a friend?…

LETTER FROM ONE INDUSTRY INSIDER TO ANOTHER Hullo Mick. Lady Antoinette here. Boy, I gotta thank you for inviting me to Jordon Waters and Stephanie Marrow‘s label influencer/release party the other night. I got your text that you weren’t feeling well (read: too much coke and booze) and couldn’t show up. Normally, I detest these…

IT WOULD BE ABSURD TO MISS THIS THEATER In  Endgame, the end of the world is upon us. But so, too, is the end of Ciarán O’Reilly’s superlative production at Irish Rep, which has been extended to — and must close — April 16, 2023. Four characters inhabit a squalid little room where the blind and…