Clik here to view.
Things of the past
The Broadway Theatre has lately been cursed by a parade of the ghastly: in 2019 there was a lurching musical King Kong, then in 2020 Ivo van Hove’s strange production of West Side Story, in which much...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Painful experiences
Those who seek to understand the state of American playwriting should peruse the work of Annie Baker, one of its most lauded practitioners. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur “genius”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Black comedy
What is a theater director to do when handed an alleged comedy whose text contains almost nothing that is funny? The best ones would say, “No, thanks,” and move on to the next item in the stack. Others...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Misplaced energies
It’s a good thing Philip Roth has died; otherwise he would surely be canceled. Points for courage, then, to John Turturro, who cowrote and stars in a defiantly cancelable one-act stage adaptation of...
View ArticleNot yet dead
Shamelessly recreating the talk around my seventh-grade lunch table—thanks to the efforts of my pals and me, “It’s just a flesh wound!” entered the language—Monty Python’s Spamalot (now playing at the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Questions of character
Written in 1961, Tennessee Williams’s The Night of the Iguana (at the Pershing Square Signature Center through February 25) is essentially an Episcopalian Graham Greene story: we’re in sweaty,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Addicted to futility
The anti-Nazi resistance gets the Rent treatment in White Rose: The Musical (at Theatre Row through March 31), in which four plucky friends and their teacher at the University of Munich—who called...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Behind the veil
Doubt: A Parable (at the Todd Haimes Theatre, formerly the American Airlines Theatre, though April 14) may be the finest play yet written about the impulses underlying the #MeToo movement. Crucially,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old & tired
If you think newspaper editors are more worried about upholding the reputations of their communities than sales, attention, and awards, and will therefore try their damnedest to quash muckraking tales...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Strongmen & weak ones
Dramatizing the pathos of Chekhov is the easy part; finding the comedy is the challenge. Any precise translation stands a strong chance of falling flat, so retaining the characters and dilemmas while...
View ArticleSalmon 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 ArticleClik here to view.
Seventies swagger
By far the most engrossing play of the Broadway season just concluded was Stereophonic (at the Golden Theatre through January 5, 2025), a piece by David Adjmi featuring a small number of songs by Will...
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 Article