In The Minutes, Tracy Letts’ timely and unnerving dark comedy, Noah Reid (Schitt’s Creek) plays Mr. Peel, a wide-eyed, newly elected city councilman in the fictional small town of Big Cherry. Early in this week’s meeting, performed in real time at Studio 54, Peel’s eccentric colleagues mispronounce ‘piqued’ and ‘jejune’ and squabble over the difference between “semantics” and “nomenclature,” and what constitutes new vs. old business. Continue Reading
UZO ADUBA & SANDWICHES STAR IN LYNN NOTTAGE KITCHEN COMEDY: REVIEW
Uzo Aduba, of In Treatment and Orange Is the New Black, plays the hilariously tyrannical proprietor of her self-named truck-stop diner in Clyde’s. She lords it over her crew of short-order cooks trying to reclaim their lives — and create the perfect sandwich — in Lynn Nottage’s hopeful comedy at the Helen Hayes Theater. Continue Reading
EDIE FALCO RADIANT IN MTC’S ‘MORNING SUN’: REVIEW
In Morning Sun, a world premiere presented by Manhattan Theatre Club, British playwright Simon Stephens precisely captures 60 years of history, local custom, and mother-daughter dynamics via three generations of ordinary women just trying to get through in an ever-changing Manhattan.Continue Reading
‘PASS OVER’ IS TENSE, TAUT DRAMA: REVIEW
Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s one-act drama, Pass Over, Broadway’s first play in 18 months, is a bleak yet funny and poignant mash-up of Waiting for Godot and the Book of Exodus. Two poor young black men, mired in a hell-scape of deep-seated racism and gratuitous violence, dream of a better future. So many in their neighborhood have been killed that they can’t remember all of their names.Continue Reading
A ‘MERRY’ RETURN OF SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: REVIEW
“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
