The curious thing about Poor Yella Rednecks, Qui Nguyen's Manhattan Theatre Club follow-up to his well-received, autobiographical Vietgone of several seasons back, is that its title characte…
Whoo-whee! It's a good thing Hansol Jung's Merry Me, at New York Theatre Workshop, hired an intimacy coordinator (RocÃo Mendez). A great deal of shagging permeates the action, of various …
How much you like Stereophonic, David Adjmi's play with (quite a lot of) music at Playwrights Horizons, may well hinge on how much you like Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Aerosmith, and their ilk…
A word of advice: Before seeing Translations, the opening volley in Irish Repertory Theatre's season-long (Brian) Friel Project, show up early. To get maximum impact out of this beguiling li…
Winners! Losers! Sinners! Boozers! So goes a line in "24 Hours a Day," the opening number of Golden Rainbow, the 1968 musical being given a rare airing at York Theatre Company's Musicals in …
Indulge us for a moment, please, we collectors of cast albums and mavens of Tony Awards trivia. In 1975, a lot of Jerry Herman fans were very upset when his favorite among his scores, Mack a…
Sounds current, doesn't it? When I told friends I was reviewing something called How to Steal an Election, at least one responded, "Oh, is it new?" Not at all: The Off-Broadway musical by Wi…
It can't be easy to cram two separate plays into one 70-minute running time, but that appears to be what playwright Deirdre Kinahan has done with The Saviour, a compact drama now on Irish Re…
Dysfunctional families rarely emerge as dysfunctional as the one portrayed in Wet Brain, John J. Caswell, Jr.'s high-decibel whatsit of a comedy-drama on Playwrights Horizons' mainstage in a…
Well, it's one way to kick off Pride Month. Love + Science, David J. Glass's drama now at City Center Stage II, recalls the whole horrible 1980s mishandling of the emerging AIDS crisis, as s…
Primary Trust, to begin with, is the name of a bank. Its columned exterior dominates the streetscape of Cranberry, New York"the town of 15,000 is fictitious, but it could be any of a couple …
How much you know about basketball, it seems fair to say, will go a long way toward determining how much you will like Rajiv Joseph's King James, at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage 1. I don't…
The last time Playwrights Horizons aimed to just make us laugh and not think too hard was The Thanksgiving Play. That turned out well. Playwrights is back in comedic mode with Regretfully, S…
As an Off-Broadway nonmusical, Vanities ran forever, opening in 1976 and closing after almost 1,800 performances. A look at three besties (one of whom was played by Kathy Bates) at the end o…
Whew, this one really needed an intimacy coordinator. Liliana Padilla's How to Defend Yourself, at New York Theatre Workshop, is mostly about its titular topic, as reflected through the unea…
There's more than a whiff of Our Town in The Best We Could, Emily Feldman's "family tragedy" now on Manhattan Theatre Club's mainstage. The Wilder influence begins with Lael Jellinek's sceni…
Who are these people? Why are they sharing a stage? Where are the character details that would help us understand them better? The Wanderers, Anna Ziegler's new drama at the Laura Pels, shar…
Exactly what Samuel Beckett was up to with Endgame has been the source of much speculation. A meditation on the futility of life? A fever dream about the inevitable journey toward death? A p…
Moral ambiguity seeps into, permeates, and ultimately overwhelms The Smuggler, Ronán Noone's intelligent little "thriller in rhyme" downstairs at Irish Rep. The one-hander, performed with…
Wedging some 40 songs into a little over 90 minutes, Stardust Road is filled with Great American Songbook treasures, well-known and otherwise. And it mostly sounds terrific, thanks to Lawren…
Mary, though we don't find out until the very last moment that that's her name, is recording a monologue on her phone, which she's set up on a tripod, and the mechanics baffle her. Media-sav…
A tough one, this. Bruce Norris's Downstate, now playing at Playwrights Horizons, plunks us down into a repellent environment, one we'd never choose to find ourselves in, and shakes our assu…
Given the human suffering we are made to witness in the Roundabout Theatre Company production of You Will Get Sick"the main character's terrifying and mysterious physical deterioration, even…
Chester Bailey. A prosaic title, and the play at Irish Rep, by Joseph Dougherty, doesn't overflow with poetry, either. It's a straightforward little two-hander, one with perhaps too many tan…
american (tele)visions, Victor I. Cazares's new play, in a premiere production at New York Theatre Workshop, is a kaleidoscope, an ever-shifting dazzlement of colors, patterns, shapes, multi…