There are skeletons in Helena Alving’s (a tortured yet stalwart Lily Rabe) closet whose secrets she would rather not be revealed. More devastating to Helena than these skeletons is the bevy of ghosts that will not allow her to rest until their messages and warnings from her past are heard and fully processed in the present. Helena’s reawakened trauma is…
The creative team for the musical “Buena Vista Social Club” have been hard at work making a few changes in preparation for its Broadway debut after a successful run at the Atlantic Theater. The most notable alteration is the transition from a small off-Broadway stage to the considerably larger stage of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. Although, at no fault of…
A star-studded production has found its way to Broadway from Sydney Australia, with an adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde. This transformation of the classic is written and directed by Kip Williams, and features one actor, Sarah Snook, playing all the roles, including the narrator. In this modern age of theater, it has become extremely common…
In Simon Stephens’s brilliant “Vanya,” the adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya, Andrew Scott portrays the eight main characters from the 1897 play. He depicts these familiar characters with a degree of believability and authenticity that is beyond remarkable. That would be impressive enough if he portrayed one character at a time, but there is often more than one character…
The latest import from London is a perfect example of the broad slapstick comedy that British audiences are fond of across the pond, and it joins the ranks of several similar shows that have invaded Broadway in the past few years. One of the reasons the new musical “Operation Mincemeat” is successful is the interesting and compelling storyline based on…
Two half-brothers half a world apart face the decline of their mother in Samuel D. Hunter’s “Grangeville” currently on at The Pershing Square Signature Center’s Alice Griffen Jewel Box Theatre. The mood of the conversations between forty-something Arnold (Brian J. Smith) who lives in Rotterdam and his older half-brother Jerry (Paul Sparks) who still lives in Grangeville, Idaho range from…
The first preview of the norm-disrupting production of “Julius Caesar” kicked off a promising start to this year’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival, now in its 90th season. During the preshow announcement, local playgoers and seasonal staff conveyed their pride for Ashland’s yearly homage to William Shakespeare’s masterworks with a level of cheering and applause one would expect to hear at a…
The new play by Matthew Lombardo titled “Conversations with Mother” now playing Off-Broadway at Theatre 555, is a lighthearted and comical evening of entertainment, mostly due to the extremely talented cast. This eighty-five minute two-hander stars Caroline Aaron and Matt Doyle, who make use of their perfect timing and comedic skills to bring as many laughs as possible to the…
There is nothing about liberation, nor is there anything liberating in Bess Wohl’s “Liberation” currently running at the Laura Pels Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre. There is gratuitous and unnecessary nudity on stage that requires patrons to relinquish their phones before entering the theater. That nudity is completely unnecessary: the questions raised about the characters’…
Sam Shephard’s iconic 1977 “Curse of the Starving Class” is enjoying its second revival production at The Pershing Square Signature Center. The 2019 Terry Kinney revival (also at Pershing Square Signature Center) starred Maggie Siff and David Warshofsky as Ella and Weston. The current revival, directed by Scott Elliott and starring Calista Flockhart as Ella and Christian Slater as Weston,…