Salmon run
“The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked about,” notes Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase in Our American Queen, the new play by Thomas Klingenstein (at the Flea Theatre through June 29). Chase...
View ArticleTerry Teachout, 1956–2022
The thing to know about Terry Teachout is that he knew everything. Whether it was pop culture or high culture, from the ballet and the opera down to John Wayne pictures from the 1940s, he marinated in...
View ArticleRunning from ghosts
The reflections of any literate Irish actor can normally be counted upon to produce a half-decent evening of theater, but Gabriel Byrne’s episodic two-act monologue “Walking with Ghosts” (which is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Icons for sale
Among playwrights and screenwriters, the New Zealander Anthony McCarten is a sort of People magazine profiler. He writes respectfully about the interior lives of celebrities, although unlike People...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No city of angels
Broadway plays dealing with black life tend to stick to what you might call a New York Times view of the world. Some lean into campy, even maudlin, downtown-style cabaret (Jordan Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Piety vs. Pi
The finest puppet show on Broadway is undoubtedly Life of Pi (at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre through September 3), following the 2001 Yann Martel novel and the 2012 Ang Lee film. Ah, but it’s not...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Quips aplenty
In Good Night, Oscar, Doug Wright has written a play that does a public service in commemorating the freewheeling wit and general obstreperousness of a mostly forgotten mid-century entertainer. Today...
View ArticleAbout face
My, what a lot of acting Jodie Comer is doing in the one-woman, one-act Broadway play Prima Facie (at the John Golden Theatre through July 2). At the start, Comer’s English defense barrister Tessa...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Well, shucks
Starting in 1971, fretting about changing times and advertisers clamoring for more appeal to young adults, CBS led the television networks in taking a scythe to down-home entertainment. The rural...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Looking for a sign
Bedeviled by a clunky title, a long running time, a diffuse storyline, and a general verbosity even by the standards of drama, Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window was not a...
View Article