32 stories by "Jil Picariello"
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, September 13, 2018 How many Betties does it take to make a great play? Five, if the new play from the MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel is any proof. Colle…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, September 11, 2018 It's a story we've heard so often that we have to fight complacency: a young man is shot and killed by police, for doing nothing more th…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, June 19, 2018 After last summer's uproariously trumped-up and absurdly controversial Julius Caesar and the magical elder fairyland of Midsummer Night's Dre…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, May 1, 2018 Warning: This is not a play for the depressed, the downhearted, the despairing, or the dejected. Even though the current incarnation of Eugene …
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, April 26, 2018 Sometimes a little madness goes a long way. Especially on stage. And especially in the story of Saint Joan. But what happens when Joan, the …
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, April 12, 2018 If you don't know what “fetch” means, perhaps this isn't the show for you. But for those of us who think the 2004 film, written …
Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, March 29, 2018 First, let me report that the just renovated new Broadway home of Second Stage Theater, the Helen Hayes, is just grand. Intimate and grand, whi…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, March 13, 2018 Let's give playwright Joshua Harmon a whole lot of credit for taking on the hot-button issue of diversity without preaching or pulling any p…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, March 9, 2018 Sometimes I get stuck on the details. Like how a brother and sister well into their sixties (he says he's 60 but I don't buy it) can have a s…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, March 6, 2018 It has nothing to do with royalty. The women who occupy this illegal basement apartment in the borough of Queens are about as far from royal …
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, February 26, 2018 In Relevance, the deeply underwritten new play by JC Lee, Jayne Houdyshell assays a role usually played by a man: an arrogant, aging l…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, February 22, 2018 In Edward Albee's world, people quarrel, threaten, argue, fight, and struggle against each other. They bite, tussle, demean, condemn. His…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, February 6, 2018 If you've ever wondered what a silver-tongued devil looks like, head over to the Linda Gross Theater and check out the Atlantic Theater Co…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, February 2, 2018 Is there a theatrical term for a biopic? You know, a movie that covers the life (or portion of the life) of someone, usually a famous some…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 28, 2017 I wish all monsters looked like Robert Fairchild. In this latest effort from the Ensemble for the Romantic Century, Fairchild, as Mary Sh…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 18, 2017 Did you know that musical therapy was invented in the 18th century? Apparently it was, when the world-renowned castrato Carlo Maria Mi…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 12, 2017 From the moment you enter the theater, you know something ain't right. Things are cockeyed. Maybe it's the bottle of wine you had at dinn…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 6, 2017 Rajiv Joseph’s last play at the Atlantic Theater, Guards at the Taj, featured so much blood that the two women in front of me walked…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 4, 2017 A few years ago, still in the throws of my Next to Normal obsession, when I was staying up way too late watching every crappy phone-filmed…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 4, 2017 There's so much going on in the new revival of Once On This Island, which opened last night at Circle in the Square, that it's hard to dif…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, December 1, 2017 There's something remarkable going on at the Hudson Theatre, where Beau Willimon's new play The Parisian Woman, directed by Pam MacKinnon,…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, November 3, 2017 Ayad Akhtar's 2013 play Disgraced garnered fine reviews and a Pulitzer for its nuanced exploration of racial and religious divides. It off…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, October 31, 2017 If you have no idea what M. Butterfly is about and plan to see the play, now on Broadway with Clive Owen and Jin Ha starring, quit reading…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, October 20, 2017 There's something off about Lonely Planet. This play should sear and burn, should leave you choking for air. And maybe it did, when Steven…
By Jil Picariello, Theater Editor, October 20, 2017 A confession: I never saw the original Torch Song Trilogy, or the three separate plays that came before it. So I have nothing to compare i…
