Act One of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” currently running at the Palace Theatre takes place at a well-apportioned Chinese restaurant. Skillfully navigating Mamet’s iconic wordy text with rapid-fire delivery – in both monologues and dialogues – five realtors, their office manager, and a client with buyer’s remorse provide the exposition needed for the audience to parse Act Two. This…
The themes explored in Alice Childress’s “Wine in the Wilderness” currently running at Classic Stage Company include classism and economic struggles; the resilience and strength of communities and individuals navigating challenges in the economic, social and personal environments; identity; and the role of the arts in interpreting and influencing societal norms. And although these themes resonate in every community, Childress…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
The full title of “The Antiquities” currently running at Playwrights Horizons is “A Tour of the Permanent Collection in the Museum of the Late Human Antiquities.” The title contains two important pairs of words: “Permanent Collection” and “Late Human.” The play begins at some point in the far distant future with two museum docents W1 (Aria Shahghasemi) and W2 (Amelia…
It is important to pay attention to the title of a play, especially in the case of Leslye Headland’s well-crafted “Cult of Love” currently running at the Helen Hayes. The Dahl nuclear family cult began early in the lives of the Dahl children. Diana (Shailene Woodley), Evie (Rebecca Henderson), Johnny (Christopher Sears), and Mark (Zachary Quinto) experienced a sheltered childhood…
What could go wrong at a private school whose five-member board of directors makes all decisions based on consensus and has what benefitted the community at heart as their guiding principle. A board so committed to inclusion that The Eureka Day School in Berkeley, California’s cultural identity drop-down menu for prospective parents offers eleven choices. And if Eli (an oblivious…