Monday, January 20, 2014
BROTHERS’ BOND Josh Hecht does an outstanding job directing Jake Jeppson’s effective new play The Clearing, about two brothers who suffer from a dark secret they’ve shared for the past…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:06AMFriday, January 17, 2014
LEAR, BECAUSE IT’S THERE A friend commented to me once that as hard to take as Orthodox Jews might seem to us secular ones, it is largely thanks to them and their stubborn adherence to the…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:01AMThursday, January 16, 2014
A WIND OF DISAPPOINTMENT Having seen some months ago Paul Takacs’s outstanding staging of a two-character play called Tender Napalm, I was very much looking forward to watching his imagini…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:13PMMonday, January 13, 2014
DIARY OF A PRETENTIOUS NITWIT The Woman in the one-woman show The Surrender, adapted for the stage by Isabelle Stoffel and Toni Bentley from Ms. Bentley’s book The Surrender, An Erotic Mem…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:15AMSunday, December 15, 2013
THEATRICALIZING AN ARTIST’S WORLD The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, a biography or perhaps an imagined eulogy of performance artist Marina Abramović, the show’s still living coll…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:41PMSaturday, December 7, 2013
A LOVELY INNOVATIVE STAGING OF AN OLD FAVORITE Theater artistry overcomes budgetary constraints in Jessica Burr’s delightful, poignant and absorbing staging of A Christmas Carol, from an a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:53AMWednesday, December 4, 2013
A BEAUTIFUL SHELL WITHOUT A NUT A show can be forgiven many things when its characters are compelling and its dramatics are solid; if the audience is emotionally involved in the fate of the …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:00PMMonday, December 2, 2013
YOUNG, BEAUTIFUL, TALENTED AND NAKED Directed by Russell Dobular and written by him and the Naked Holiday Ensemble, with additional material by Stacy Lane, Endtimes Productions’ annual Chr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:35PMMonday, November 25, 2013
THE GOOD WASPS There’s nothing especially remarkable about A.R. Gurney’s latest offering Family Furniture, a play that investigates a family of 1950s WASPs spending the summer at their L…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:49AMFriday, November 22, 2013
WHAT’S FUNNIER THAN MURDER? As a critic I’m embarrassed to gush but I must confess I gave my first standing ovation last night to honor Jefferson Mays who plays all nine unfortunate memb…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:42PMWednesday, November 20, 2013
NOTHING IF NOT INTENSE The night their shelter burns down, two homeless Iraqi war veterans, Horace and Alicia, both suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, are given vouchers to stay …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:26PMWednesday, November 13, 2013
TWO PLAYS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE Many plays begin comically and end in tragedy. Rarely though does the trajectory go in the other direction, as it does with Fredrik Brattberg’s fascinating, …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:49PMTHE SHACKLES OF RADIO ARE LOOSENED A BIT FOR THE STAGE Michael Gambon is tremendous in Trevor Nunn’s staging of Samuel Beckett’s radio play All That Fall. The drama, first performed on B…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:25AMThursday, November 7, 2013
SOUTHERN NOIR The narrative of Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian orbits a murder in 1964 Jackson, Mississippi. Susan Perch (Amy Madigan) kicks her husband Bill (Ed Harris), a respected dentist,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:00PMMonday, October 28, 2013
OOFTA, INDEED The premise of C. Denby Swanson’s black comedy The Norwegians is that two women Minnesotan women, Texas transplant Olive (Veronica Cruz) and Kentucky transplant Betty (Karla …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:07PMTuesday, October 22, 2013
EAGER FOR MORE A farcical, semi-interactive burlesque fairytale – complete with girls in g-strings and tassels, a pun-spewing, corny joke-telling MC, a Jazz combo, and a working bar inside…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:00PMMonday, October 7, 2013
BACK TO THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS Definitely thoughtful, at times charming, occasionally compelling, but mostly tedious, Adriano Shaplin’s new play Sarah Flood in Salem Mass, tells of two gir…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:22PMMonday, September 16, 2013
SOMETIMES LONGER WOULD BE BETTER Anxious to have a child with the best possible genes and distrustful of sperm from anonymous donors, Gretchen (Halley Feiffer) convinces her “gold-star” …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:23PMThursday, August 29, 2013
A DRAGON IN BROOKLYN A true auteur and renaissance man of the theater, Robert Lepage returns with his troupe Ex Machina to The Brooklyn Academy of Music for its 2013 Next Wave Festival, this…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:40PMTuesday, July 23, 2013
STORY-LESS A rubber knife jiggles and bends during an ostensibly dramatic stabbing scene. Characters’ “trumpet playing” is out of sync with the actual trumpeter. Performers struggle to…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:08PMMonday, June 24, 2013
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 struggl…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:49PMSunday, June 16, 2013
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 c…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:58PMWednesday, June 12, 2013
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 sta…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMTuesday, June 11, 2013
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…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:00PMTuesday, June 4, 2013
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, mak…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:15PMSaturday, June 1, 2013
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 theatrica…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:21PMSunday, May 26, 2013
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 performe…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:50PMWednesday, May 22, 2013
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 curren…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:47AMTuesday, May 14, 2013
A PLAY CANNOT LIVE ON CONCEPT ALONE Works of art in themselves – namely Nicole Pearce’s lighting and Katie Down’s sound design and musical compositions — go a long way in helping…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:00AMMonday, May 13, 2013
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…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:25PMSaturday, May 4, 2013
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 …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:45PM 
