“It’s been a long, hard year,” John Falstaff (Jacob Ming-Trent) complains in Merry Wives, Jocelyn Bioh’s update of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Delacorte Theatre. “Been stuck in the house just eating snacks. Watching Netflix. Bored outta my Got-damned mind!” So when it comes to his somewhat clumsy attempts to seduce his neighbors’ wives, Falstaff finishes with a flourish, “Can you blame me for tryna get with Madam Page and Madam Ford?”Continue Reading
BROADWAY GOES BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH ‘WEST SIDE STORY’: REVIEW
Video has a starring role in the dazzling new revival of West Side Story.
UNIRONIC ‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’ AIMS TO SAVE THE PLANET: REVIEW
The world is in crisis. Jagged Little Pill is on it.
Gun violence? “Fear has no place in our schools,” an onstage placard reads. Climate change? Name-checked in another sign. Rape? The musical dramatizes an attack via metaphorical modern dance. Opioid addiction? The show’s matriarch buys and pops down black market Oxycodone, a scene played out forward and in reverse.Continue Reading
DIVORCED. BEHEADED. BOFFO: ‘SIX’ REVIEW
CAMBRIDGE, MASS — Six, the pop-concert musical featuring the wives of Henry VIII cracking wise and woeful about their tragic destinies, is an inventive and exuberant take on 16th-century history for the Snapchat generation and beyond.Continue Reading
SARNA LAPINE REINVENTS ‘ANNIE GET YOUR GUN’: REVIEW
Sparkling lead performances help make Bay Street Theater’s new Annie Get Your Gun a warm, nostalgic visit to an earlier era.Continue Reading
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: ‘MOULIN ROUGE’ REVIEW
Three decades after The Phantom first dropped his chandelier in New York and Jean Valjean took up pursuit here, along comes another Paris-based musical spectacle and prospective blockbuster.Continue Reading
MERCEDES RUEHL IN SAG HARBOR CAMPUS POWER PLAY: REVIEW
Alan Fox’s Safe Space at Bay Street Theater is a provocative exploration of academic freedom in our call-out culture — and a three-character cage match to control the narrative during a campus crisis.Continue Reading
‘A STRANGE LOOP’ EXPANDS BOUNDARIES: REVIEW
Did he really just say that? And sing that?Continue Reading
DANIELLE BROOKS IN JOYOUS ‘MUCH ADO:’ REVIEW
Halfway through the first act of Shakespeare in the Park‘s Much Ado About Nothing, I found myself on Danielle Brooks’ lap.Continue Reading
SUSAN SARANDON, R&H MIX AWKWARDLY IN JESSE EISENBERG’S ‘HAPPY TALK’: REVIEW
“I always thought that my lot in life was to help people en masse,” pontificates Susan Sarandon as an unbearable community theater diva in Jesse Eisenberg’s half-baked new play, Happy Talk.
“Through my work. People see me on stage. They see the human condition — it filters through me — and maybe they learn a little something about themselves,” Sarandon’s character, Lorraine, says.Continue Reading
