Rupert Murdoch is a scourge, a reckless power monger whose pursuit of material gain has irrevocably changed and devalued the journalistic universe. On that much many of us will probably agre…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:45PMThe New York Times beat me to it yesterday in saying so, but gosh, this is some season John Patrick Shanley is having. First a well-received revival of his early play, Danny and the Deep Blu…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:00PMIt's called A Sign of the Times, and zowie, is it ever. Start with a jukebox score, consisting of rock 'n' roll favorites old enough to be nostalgically remembered by people old enough to be…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:32PMAt the Brick, there's not a bad seat in the house. That's because the house is a long, narrow room framing a long, narrow table, plus a few barstool-height chairs against the wall to fill th…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:23PMStorytelling doesn't come much more basic than I Love You So Much I Could Die, Mona Pirnot's autobiographical one-woman show at New York Theatre Workshop. NYTW's mainstage theater usually fe…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 06:06PMThe first thing about Jonah: It's not much about Jonah. He's a character, to be sure, an endearing one, embodied by Hagan Oliveras with goofy Jesse Eisenberg charm. But Jonah is mostly about…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:40AMSaid my companion as we exited Aristocrats: "It's The Cherry Orchard meets Three Sisters." Not quite, but Brian Friel's 1979 drama, in revival at Irish Repertory Theatre, does have a heavy l…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:33AMThe Jerusalem Syndrome? The timing does not seem propitious for the York Theatre Company to trot out what's meant to be a fizzy, escapist musical comedy set in the present-day Middle East. B…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 07:36PMWith Stereophonic blaring happily away on its mainstage, Playwrights Horizons is attempting an intriguing experiment upstairs at the Peter Jay Sharp: three one-acts, all solo shows, each wri…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:18AMThe curious thing about Poor Yella Rednecks, Qui Nguyen's Manhattan Theatre Club follow-up to his well-received, autobiographical Vietgone of several seasons back, is that its title characte…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 12:40AMWhoo-whee! It's a good thing Hansol Jung's Merry Me, at New York Theatre Workshop, hired an intimacy coordinator (Rocío Mendez). A great deal of shagging permeates the action, of various ge…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 05:16AMHow much you like Stereophonic, David Adjmi's play with (quite a lot of) music at Playwrights Horizons, may well hinge on how much you like Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Aerosmith, and their ilk…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:04PMA word of advice: Before seeing Translations, the opening volley in Irish Repertory Theatre's season-long (Brian) Friel Project, show up early. To get maximum impact out of this beguiling li…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:09PMWinners! Losers! Sinners! Boozers! So goes a line in "24 Hours a Day," the opening number of Golden Rainbow, the 1968 musical being given a rare airing at York Theatre Company's Musicals in …
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:51PMIndulge us for a moment, please, we collectors of cast albums and mavens of Tony Awards trivia. In 1975, a lot of Jerry Herman fans were very upset when his favorite among his scores, Mack a…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:59PMSounds current, doesn't it? When I told friends I was reviewing something called How to Steal an Election, at least one responded, "Oh, is it new?" Not at all: The Off-Broadway musical by Wi…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:16PMIt can't be easy to cram two separate plays into one 70-minute running time, but that appears to be what playwright Deirdre Kinahan has done with The Saviour, a compact drama now on Irish Re…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:56AMDysfunctional families rarely emerge as dysfunctional as the one portrayed in Wet Brain, John J. Caswell, Jr.'s high-decibel whatsit of a comedy-drama on Playwrights Horizons' mainstage in a…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:47AMWell, it's one way to kick off Pride Month. Love + Science, David J. Glass's drama now at City Center Stage II, recalls the whole horrible 1980s mishandling of the emerging AIDS crisis, as s…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:50PMPrimary Trust, to begin with, is the name of a bank. Its columned exterior dominates the streetscape of Cranberry, New York–the town of 15,000 is fictitious, but it could be any of a coupl…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:43PMHow much you know about basketball, it seems fair to say, will go a long way toward determining how much you will like Rajiv Joseph's King James, at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage 1. I don't…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:20PMThe last time Playwrights Horizons aimed to just make us laugh and not think too hard was The Thanksgiving Play. That turned out well. Playwrights is back in comedic mode with Regretfully, S…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:36AMAs an Off-Broadway nonmusical, Vanities ran forever, opening in 1976 and closing after almost 1,800 performances. A look at three besties (one of whom was played by Kathy Bates) at the end o…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:50PMWhew, this one really needed an intimacy coordinator. Liliana Padilla's How to Defend Yourself, at New York Theatre Workshop, is mostly about its titular topic, as reflected through the unea…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:23PMThere's more than a whiff of Our Town in The Best We Could, Emily Feldman's "family tragedy" now on Manhattan Theatre Club's mainstage. The Wilder influence begins with Lael Jellinek's sceni…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:30PMWho are these people? Why are they sharing a stage? Where are the character details that would help us understand them better? The Wanderers, Anna Ziegler's new drama at the Laura Pels, shar…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:35PMExactly what Samuel Beckett was up to with Endgame has been the source of much speculation. A meditation on the futility of life? A fever dream about the inevitable journey toward death? A p…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:03PMMoral ambiguity seeps into, permeates, and ultimately overwhelms The Smuggler, Ronán Noone's intelligent little "thriller in rhyme" downstairs at Irish Rep. The one-hander, performed with s…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 11:04PMWedging some 40 songs into a little over 90 minutes, Stardust Road is filled with Great American Songbook treasures, well-known and otherwise. And it mostly sounds terrific, thanks to Lawren…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:17PMMary, though we don't find out until the very last moment that that's her name, is recording a monologue on her phone, which she's set up on a tripod, and the mechanics baffle her. Media-sav…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 08:17PMA tough one, this. Bruce Norris's Downstate, now playing at Playwrights Horizons, plunks us down into a repellent environment, one we'd never choose to find ourselves in, and shakes our assu…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 04:06AM