Category Theater
You May Fire When Ready
THEATER REVIEW: The Present Ethel Barrymore Theater, New York, January 15, 2016 The curtain rises on Cate Blanchett with a pistol in her hand. She looks out at the audience, then at the pistol with a grim, steely countenance. It’s a gift she’s received for her fortieth birthday. As the adage suggests, we know […]
Art Isn’t Easy
Hello, George. Where did you go, George?
Seeing Sunday in the Park with George, and listening to the score, has always been an emotional experience for me. Before our eyes, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical turns an impressionist Georges Seurat painting into a rich canvas of overlapping lives.
And Do They Know, It’s Like I’m Losing My Mind
I’m writing about Long Day’s Journey into Night four weeks later. As my first time experiencing this Eugene O’Neill drama, it crept up on me gradually in the theater. When you know a play will last four hours, your body relaxes more at first, eases into the experience…
It’s Almost Like a Dream
THEATER REVIEW: She Loves Me Studio 54, New York, May 14, 2016 Everyone talks about “Ice Cream” – Stephen Sondheim had it on his list of Songs I Wished I’d Written. Barbra recorded the famous ballad of nerves “Will He Like Me?” But we don’t talk much about the rest of She Loves Me, especially […]
Save the Last Dunce
THEATER REVIEW: A Confederacy of Dunces Huntington Theater, Boston, December 13, 2015 They say the novel A Confederacy of Dunces is cursed. John Kennedy Toole, the author, committed suicide years before his manuscript was discovered. Then multiple actors who tried to adapt the novel to the screen (including John Belushi and John Candy) died before they […]
“And There’s Many a Tryst, and There’s Many a Bed”
THEATER REVIEW: A Little Night Music Huntington Theater, Boston, October 2, 2015 Sometimes a seasoned dish is best prepared traditionally. Director Peter DuBois handles Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music with good taste, and doesn’t veer far from its original footprint. The second act, with lovers rushing through the trees of Madame […]
What Does Eliza Do Next?
THEATER REVIEW: My Fair Lady Lyric Stage, Boston, September 10, 2015 Lyric Stage’s My Fair Lady begins at the finale, with Eliza Doolittle coming back to Henry Higgins and his gramophone. Their eyes meet, then we flash back six months before, the night Higgins meets Eliza as she hocks flowers in Covent Garden. From that initial meet-cute, […]
Chekhov Revised: Three Sisters-and-Brother
THEATER REVIEW: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike Huntington Theater, Boston, January 9, 2015 Two weeks ago, I attended the Huntington’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, waiting to see what New York raved about. Turns out Christopher Durang’s show is seriously funny and, funny enough, kind of serious. A playwright known for the […]
“Come Now, We Can Begin the Day”
THEATER REVIEW: A Delicate Balance Golden Theater, New York, January 18, 2015 “I was wondering when it would begin… when it would start.” -Claire For the first forty minutes of A Delicate Balance, Edward Albee teases us with the passive-aggressive whispers of a sedate upper-class family, sipping anisette (“Sticky.”) and cognac in their austere living-room. Agnes, […]
You gotta get a critic. 