James Feinberg

RICHARD BEAN SNOOKERS AUDIENCE WITH DELIGHTFUL ‘NAP’: REVIEW

September 28, 2018 by James Feinberg

Ahmed Aly Elsayed, Ethan Hova and Ben Schnetzer/Joan Marcus

It may seem necessary, before an American audience, to provide a primer on snooker, that English variant of billiards. But the unseen, bone-dry play-by-play snooker announcers in Richard Bean’s charming new comedy about the sport, The Nap, which opened Thursday at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, are reluctant to expend the effort.

One begrudgingly explains a few elements of the game, in an Alan Rickman-adjacent whine, “if you’re watching on the Internet in Antarctica,” or “for those on a canoe in Tahiti.” In other words, let’s assume we know the basics, and get on with the fun bits.Continue Reading

POLITICAL IS PERSONAL IN HELLMAN’S COMPELLING DRAMA: REVIEW

August 26, 2018 by James Feinberg

Lillian Hellman’s second play, Days To Come, was a flop when it premiered on Broadway in 1936. Sources differ on why — but it certainly wasn’t the writing.

The well-acted production that opened Sunday, smoothly directed by J.R. Sullivan for the Mint Theater Company, at the Beckett Theatre at Theater Row, proves a fascinating family drama set in a time of economic hardship and labor unrest. This Days To Come, the first in New York in 40 years, makes a compelling case for the play’s continued relevance.Continue Reading

‘PRETTY WOMAN’ BOTCHED BY ALL-MALE CREATIVE TEAM: REVIEW

August 17, 2018 by James Feinberg

Pretty Woman: The Musical, the over-amplified wannabe tourist trap that opened Thursday at the Nederlander Theatre, illustrates the limits of vision-free Broadway producing.

The music is monotonous and draining, the book simplistic and clichéd (much more so than the film), and the acting wooden. The best elements are its Vegas-flashy sets (by David Rockwell) and its choreography (by director Jerry Mitchell).

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL ‘BE MORE CHILL’ IS EXPLOSIVE FUN: REVIEW

August 10, 2018 by James Feinberg

The musical Be More Chill has some baggage. It’s about high school angst that verges on cliché, and it’s a showcase for the kind of head-banging pop, in this case by composer/lyricist Joe Iconis (Smash), that’s commonplace in today’s musical theater. It also has an out-there sci-fi premise: Hopelessly uncool high school sophomore Jeremy Heere (Dear Evan Hansen’s Will Roland) swallows a pill-shaped supercomputer called a SQUIP that implants itself in his brain and instructs him in the finer points of teenage social etiquette.Continue Reading

RELUCTANT DAD BIRBIGLIA EXCELS IN COMIC MONOLOGUE: REVIEW

August 3, 2018 by James Feinberg

Early in his funny and poignant off-Broadway show, The New One, the comedian Mike Birbiglia expresses a low tolerance for children. “We gotta get babies off planes,” he says. “We got rid of smoking in the eighties, so we could get rid of babies now. Or bring back smoking and get those babies some cigarettes, because they’re too stressed out and they’re too powerful.”

‘DELIGHTFULLY DAFFY’ TO ‘COCKAMAMIE MISH MASH’: GO-GO’S MUSICAL SPLITS CRITICS (WITH A PAN FROM OUR MAN)

July 27, 2018 by James Feinberg

REVIEW : The question at the heart of Head Over Heels is whether Elizabethan comedy and the music of the Go-Go’s go together. Sadly, the answer is no.

(See below for other opinions about the first musical of the season, which was capitalized for at least $11.6 million, according to investment papers.)

The jukebox musical that opened Thursday at the Hudson Theatre is (bizarrely) ostensibly based on Sir Philip Sidney’s 16th century Greek-mythological prose poem, The Arcadia. Thus the not-quite-iambic pentameter of the shepherd Musidorus (Andrew Durand), when he finds the skeletons of actors in the woods accompanied by a note: “These sad remains are of our theatre troupe, / Starved for lack of Serious Message.” This could charitably be called meta-commentary.

« Previous Page