The revival of “Take Me Out” by Richard Greenberg which opened at The Helen Hayes Theater, in many ways does not feel as if it were written twenty years ago, given the current political climate and the conservative challenges of LGBTQ+ rights. The story about a major league baseball star surprisingly coming out in a public arena, deals with the…
Tony Kushner’s dystopian vision has a firm grounding in the history of the rise of fascism in Germany in the early 1930s and in the methodical and somewhat meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler to Chancellor of the German Reich. This vision is embodied in “A Bright Room Called Day” currently running at The Public’s Anspacher Theater. Mr. Kushner places himself…
The nature-nurture psychological debate and the predestined-free will theological debate collide in Bess Wohl’s “Make Believe” currently running at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater, resulting in the brave and somewhat disturbing exploration of the blurred boundaries between what is perceived to be real life and what is perceived to be make-believe. The playwright raises several enduring questions, including whether there…
With renewed concerns about an escalation of conflict in Iraq and the possibility of a new war initiative there, one would tend to believe that the revival of Christopher Shinn’s “Dying City,” currently playing at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater, would provide new insights into the earlier Iraq War and its effects on the soldiers who served here and on…
Playwright Madeleine George sets her “Hurricane Diane” in an Early Anthropocene Time, the era defined as “the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.” Most, except members of the current Administration, see that influence to have been deleterious at best and are aware of the dire…
“Hey, I got news for you, as they say. I’m on your precious bench, and you’re never going to have it for yourself again.” – Jerry to Peter Was anyone putting the disparity between “the one percent” and the remaining “ninety-nine percent” under the cultural microscope in the late 1950s? The Baby Boomers were booming and most believed the middle-class…
Whether medieval or modern, no plague is comfortable. The first part of “The Amateurs,” currently playing at Vineyard Theatre, is uncomfortable in a different way and the audience wonders, “Can this play be as amateurish as it appears. What is the Vineyard thinking?” As it turns out, the iconic Off-Broadway theatre is thinking outside-the-box and out with the fourth wall,…