In a year that has ended so dramatically off-stage, and during which so many people talked dismissively about “political theater” — when they didn’t mean anything actually happening in a work of art — it’s good to celebrate the memorable moments that happened nightly on New York stages. These were moments that were memorable as a […]
Off-Broadway Review: Steven Adly Guirgis’ Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven
Wanda Wheels bristles when Mateo calls her “kind” in this sprawling, funny, foul-mouthed, messy, moving ensemble piece, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s first new play in New York since his Pulitzer Prize winning Between Riverside and Crazy five years ago. “Don’t pin a ‘kindness’ target on me,” Wanda says. “There’s a place for kindness. It’s not here.” […]
Off-Broadway review: Samuel D. Hunter’s Greater Clements mines rich veins of deep sorrow
There’s a joke Maggie and her son Joe like to tell on their tours of the local mine in Samuel D. Hunter’s latest play: “Guy falls down into the mine. His boss yells at him, ‘did you break anything?’ Guy shouts back, “only rocks down here, sir, not much to break.” But as Greater Clements […]
Complete Guide to Holiday shows on and off Broadway
This holiday season in New York means at least ten Christmas Carols, including one this year on Broadway, and 15 Nutcracker Suites. Holiday shows in the city range from family fare to offbeat satires and even off-color burlesque, many of which return year after year. But any guide must begin with the two oldest and […]
The Inheritance Broadway Review: Gay Life Then and Now
The Inheritance, a long, ambitious play about three generations of gay men in New York, pays homage to two masterpieces, without being one itself. Yet the play by Matthew Lopez, making his Broadway debut, is both sweeping and intimate, sophisticated and raw, a weepy that is often funny. Several performances are transporting, including two actors […]
Evita Review at New York City Center: A Feminist Spin with Two Evas
It’s surely pointless, four decades and two billion dollars after its debut, to rant about Evita, and silly to blame Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theatrical canonization of the amoral historical figure Eva Perón as paving the way for the elevation of another media personality remade into a dictator-loving populist. Still, this core problem I have with the […]
Cyrano Review: Peter Dinklage Sings, Without a Fake Nose or Much Panache
Peter Dinklage’s singing voice would not normally qualify him for a role in a musical, unless in a Disney animated movie as a singing rhinoceros. But Rex Harrison couldn’t really sing either, and he was just right for My Fair Lady. In several ways, the star of Game of Thrones is an inspired hire for […]
Bella Bella Review: Harvey Fierstein As Rep. Bella Abzug, Gutsy and Adorable
Bella Abzug spoke at my junior high school graduation, until Donna Florio’s mother told her to shut up. “This is my daughter’s graduation, not a political rally.” Abzug paused, apologized….and kept on talking for ten more minutes, caught up in the vehemence of her argument against the latest political outrage. That’s my most vivid memory […]
Freestyle Love Supreme Review: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s improv rappers on Broadway
Freestyle Love Supreme is not so much Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway follow-up to Hamilton as it is a subsidiary of Lin-Manuel Inc. The hip-hop improv group that Miranda co-founded 16 years ago with fellow Wesleyan University alumni would certainly not be performing its spontaneous raps on Broadway at up to $199 a ticket were it not […]
The Rose Tattoo Review: Marisa Tomei in Tennessee Williams’ comedy about a love-struck Sicilian widow
There are many cues to what’s wrong with this overly broad third Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ dated play, starring Marisa Tomei as Serafina Delle Rose, a Sicilian immigrant seamstress who turns from besotted wife to grieving widow to betrayed widow (because her husband had a mistress) to hopeful new lover. There are the dozens […]
Broadway Review: Slave Play. Interracial Role-playing on the Great White Way
I first saw Slave Play Off-Broadway, long before Rihanna made headlines for texting during the show (playwright Jeremy O. Harris publicly defended her; he was the one she was texting); and shortly before it became a cause célèbre among theater people for having been attacked by some black people who hadn’t actually seen it. Recently, […]
Broadway review: Tracy Letts is back on Broadway with Linda Vista
Can an underemployed middle-aged jerk be a babe magnet? That’s a question theatergoers are likely to ask about Wheeler, the central character in Linda Vista, Tracy Letts’ latest play on Broadway. Some women will surely ask the question rhetorically and in disgust; some men, full of hope. Indeed, your ability to get past that question […]