I went to the theater in New York for the last time the day after they shut down Broadway on March 12th, six months ago today. My theatergoing on Friday the 13th Off-Off Broadway (which was shut down a few days later) turned out to be a harrowing experience, – one that was so absurdly […]
Review: Incidental Moments of the Day: The Apple Family Finally Talks About Race
Things are looking up for the Apple family, but not for me, as the characters talk to one another on a Zoom call yet again. Richard Nelson’s third play in four months about the same set of characters is both the least engaging and the most problematic. Over the seventy minutes of Incidental Moments of the […]
Lynn Nottage writes for an audience of one while waiting for Broadway stages to open
Lynn Nottage, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright (Ruined, Sweat), returns to Theatre for One, the company which gave new meaning to “intimate theatre” with its one actor/one audience member live performances started a decade ago. Theatre for One’s series Here We Are , presents eight live mini-works for free, including Nottage’s What Are The Things […]
Review: Amadeus. Mozart’s rival is Salieri; the play’s rival is the movie
Historically, Amadeus is baloney. Theatrically, it’s a feast. Musically, the National Theatre’s 2016 production of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play — a recording of which is being streamed online through July 23 — arguably shares something of the same fate as Mozart’s supposed rival Salieri. This Amadeus suffers from comparison with the 1984 film directed by Milos […]
Review: The Few. Samuel D. Hunter’s entertaining play about loneliness
Watching Gideon Glick’s expressive face in The Few– elated one moment, defeated the next, then adoring, angry, hurt, resigned — is one key to unlocking the mystery of how this Play-PerView’s no-frills Zoom reading of Samuel D. Hunter’s 2014 Off-Broadway play (available online through July 16), can be so entertaining and amusing, even though its […]
The Deep Blue Sea Review: Helen McCrory’s stunning performance of a woman wracked and trapped by love
On the surface, The Deep Blue Sea might seem a love triangle, but Helen McCrory’s performance makes it a prism — multifaceted, disorienting, and brilliant – in the National Theatre’s 2016 production of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play, which is being presented online through July 16. We first see Hester unconscious on the floor of her […]
Review: Les Blancs (The Whites), National Theatre stream of Lorraine Hansberry’s last play
Lorraine Hansberry’s third and final Broadway play, which is being presented online through July 9 in a dark, expressionistic production directed in 2016 by Yael Farber for the National Theatre, is set in an Africa struggling against British colonialism. But some of the issues the playwright explores make it feel especially timely: It argues for racial […]
Review: And So We Come Forth. Richard Nelson’s Apple family, still in lockdown, asking questions, hoping to touch
The Apple family is back again, on another Zoom call. After the triumphant return in April of writer and director Richard Nelson’s Apple Family series with What Do We Need To Talk About, which seemed perfectly timed — the right play at the right time – we now get And So We Come Forth. The […]
Playwright Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) on self love and self acceptance in these turbulent times
Strange Loop, Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, is, itself, stuck in a strange loop. The smash Off-Broadway hit was scheduled to come to Woolly Mammoth Theatre in September on its way to Broadway. (It’s been rescheduled in DC for summer, 2021.) Meanwhile, his musical on hold even as it piles up accolades, Jackson is […]
Viral Monologues’ series “COVID AND INCARCERATION” hard truths, powerful telling
“We have a humanitarian crisis in prison that will blow up in our faces,” says André De Shields, speaking sonorously and looking grave in a clerical collar and a salt-and-pepper beard, as the character in Shakira Senghor’s play A Father’s Sorrow. It is one of the 15 new plays in “COVID and Incarceration,” a special […]
Review: To Master the Art, Julia Child play makes an awkward transfer to online viewing
This play about cookbook author Julia Child is a recipe for how not to do online theater. To Master the Art falls flat, despite some great ingredients. This is not how I expected to react. Forced to spend more time at home, and no time in restaurants, I’ve rediscovered the kitchen, going so far as […]
Review: What Do We Need to Talk About? Richard Nelson’s Apple family play, made for our screens.
After spending an hour on Zoom with the Apple family in Richard Nelson’s latest low-key play, I was surprised by my reaction, which I could sum up as: Hallelujah! What Do We Need to Talk About? is splendid. Streamed live on April 29 but available on YouTube at least through May 3rd, this fifth play […]
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