Molly Sweeney
Chopin Theater

The debate over corrective measures for disabilities didn't just begin with cochlear implants or gender-reassignments. As long ago as 1994, Brian Friel—after reading Oliver Sacks's account of a man's recovery from lifelong vision loss—wrote a play exploring the epistemological repercussions engendered thereby.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2022
Plaza Suite
Hudson Theater

“Adorable!” The word rang throughout the theater during this old comedy chestnut, mainly for leading lady Sarah Jessica Parker, who, even through the most dire scenes, is perky and..well, adorable. Her real-life husband, Matthew Broderick, not so much. But he’s won two Tonys and has a great theater following, so his low-energy persona apparently works well for him.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
April 2022
It's Just Like Coming to Church: Welcome to the Church of YOU
Black Ensemble Theater

Don't be fooled by the title. The Gospel of Jackie Taylor is not constructed on Old Rugged Crosses, Poor Wayfaring Strangers, or Walks Through Lonesome Valleys. To be sure, there's a collection box at the entrance, but money doesn't grant you a VIP pass. On the contrary, the word most often repeated in the score's song lyrics is "LOVE"—not erotic objectification, but the kind arising from acceptance of one's self, without which there can be no love for other creatures, mortal or divine.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
April 2022
MJ: The Musical
Neil Simon Theater

Two new Broadway productions offer boatloads of entertainment but skirt around serious examination of their subjects. That’s perfectly okay; neither the revival of Plaza Suite, nor MJ: The Musical, the jukebox-bio musical of the late King of Pop, are meant to be anything more than a lighthearted night out. Yet they hint ever so slightly at the darker issues lurking just beneath their jolly surfaces. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
On Sugarland
New York Theater Workshop

The offstage war in On Sugarland, Aleshea Harris’s poetic and riveting new play at New York Theater Workshop, is unnamed. It could be the Persian Gulf War or the conflict in Afghanistan. It could even be the one in Vietnam, except apparently there is no draft to force young people into harm’s way since the characters both living and dead have been recruited rather than forced to serve. But the war is ongoing and disproportionately preys on communities of color, like the titular one.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, A
Odyssey Theater

Walt Disney hoists himself by his own petard in A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney, the Lucas Hnath play now in a West Coast premiere at the Odyssey Theater. First done off-Broadway five years ago, the clever, sardonic drama has a set-up and style all its own.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
Last Train to Nibroc
St. Christopher's Episcopal Church

Acacia Theater, Milwaukee’s Christian faith-based theater company, presents a tiny gem of a play in Arlene Hutton’s Last Train to Nibroc. Set in late December in 1940, the tale begins as two strangers are seated together on a crowded eastbound train from Los Angeles. He is Raleigh, a washed-out serviceman (still in uniform) who dreams of visiting the bright lights of New York City. She is May, clever and sweet, who is returning home from a Christmas visit to her serviceman boyfriend that did not end well.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
Indecent
Milwaukee Chamber Theater - Cabot Theater

The Tony-nominated playIndecent, by Paula Vogel, comes vividly to life in Milwaukee’s perfect space for it: the Cabot Theater, a glorious recreation of Europe’s old-style “jewel box” theaters, created by a local philanthropist for Skylight Music Theater and Milwaukee Chamber Theater. It is the latter troupe that is offering a spine-tingling and gorgeously presented version of this play, and it is a not-to-be-missed addition to the spring theatrical season.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
Broadway in Black
Westcoast Black Theater Troupe - Donelly Theatre

A revised version of versatile Nate Jacobs’s compilation of Broadway Music and Lyrics by, about, and featuring blacks in performance, “Broadway in Black” is heavier on recent black creations. But how blacks came to The Great White Way, especially with Shuffle Along, is clearly explained between demonstrations. Lavishly costumed and choreographed, performers don’t suffer compared with Broadway’s today. WBTT’s hold up so well that audiences may wonder at their enviable energy—all so physically close on WBTT’s new polished-floor stage.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
Trayf
Geffen Playhouse - Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater

TRAYF (Yiddish for forbidden or impure food) is an intimate drama about two friends whose intense religious and personal bonds are strained to the breaking point by the pull of the secular world. The two friends are Zalmy (Ilan Eskenazi) and Shmuel (Ben Hirschhorn), teenagers who belong to the Chabad community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, circa 1991.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
Lady from the Sea, The
Court Theater

The question of What Women Want was answered long ago (by Shakespeare,no less) and the merits of Marriage For Convenience have grown more equivocal with the waning of 19th century Romanticism—all of which should render the arguments in Ibsen's fable of a "settled" wife reconsidering her options accessible to playgoers in 2022.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
Sons of Hollywood
Windy City Playhouse

If you google video clips of the seminal 1925 film “Ben-Hur,” you already know Ramon Novarro was every bit as hot as his publicity claimed, and if you've read the tell-all book “Hollywood Babylon,” you already know the tabloid gossip surrounding his unseemly death. If you're wise to the making of sausage and movies, however, you also know that there's a broken heart for every carefully cultivated palm tree on Sunset Boulevard.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
Lehman Trilogy, The
Ahmanson Theater

The Lehman Trilogy is a portrait of a rich, powerful Jewish family that put its stamp on New York for several generations. It is also a capitalist fable, an examination of the American Dream, a tragedy of epic proportions… and an inspired piece of theater.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
My Way
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Stackner Cabaret

It has been 24 years since crooner Frank Sinatra passed from this Earth. During his heyday, he rarely strayed from gossip columns, headlines, and microphones. And now his music lives on. The Milwaukee Repertory Theater pays loving tribute to Sinatra’s life in My Way: A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra .

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
Intimate Apparel
Lincoln Center - Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

Intimate Apparel is the story of Esther (Kearstin Piper Brown), an African American who has come to New York City hoping to find more job opportunities and a better life for herself. She loves her work, sewing beautiful underclothing for upscale women. But her personal life is a disaster. She's in her late 30's and has no husband, no children, and no prospects. The one male with whom she has formed a bond is strictly forbidden fruit. He's Mr. Marks (Arnold Livingston Gels), the orthodox Jew who sells Esther her fabrics.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
Plaza Suite
Hudson Theater

Two new Broadway productions offer boatloads of entertainment but skirt around serious examination of their subjects. That’s perfectly okay; neither Plaza Suite, Neil Simon’s 1968 trio of comic one-acts set in the titular hotel, nor MJ, the jukebox-bio musical of Michael Jackson, are meant to be anything more than a lighthearted night out. Yet both hint ever so slightly at the darker issues lurking just beneath their jolly surfaces. 

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
March 2022
As You Like It
Milwaukee Repertory Theater - Quadracci Powerhouse

Poor Shakespeare. Contemporary theater companies will never leave his work alone. One cannot count the number of “timely” updates to his 400-year-old plays over the years. Now Milwaukee Repertory Theater gives us an As You Like It that’s all dolled up in the groovy, psychedelic 1960s. Furthermore, a great deal of the story is now told in song, with more than 20 Beatles tunes added to spice things up.

Anne Siegel
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, The
Goodman Theater

When Mary Zimmerman's athletic-acrobatic-abstract exhibition made its debut in 1993, nobody knew what to make of an evening of kinetic display allegedly based on the aesthetic, scientific, and metaphysical precepts/contemplations of the Renaissance Man who defined the term. Was this multi-disciplinary mosaic to be viewed as dance, accompanied by words instead of music à la Martha Graham? Was it an "acting-out" game (Simon says "light reflects off solid objects")? Were we supposed to focus on the dazzling gymnastics or the explanations of their purpose?

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
On the Other Hand, We're Happy
Matrix Theater

On the Other Hand, We’re Happy was written by the Welsh playwright Daf James and first made a splash at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  Now Rogue Machine has mounted the American premiere of the play and we are all the better for it.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Gem of the Ocean
Goodman Theater

The theater playbill for Gem of the Ocean informs us that our setting is the industrial outskirts of Pittsburgh in 1904, where street talk hints at labor tensions in the nearby steel mills, recently rendered volatile by the suicide of a factory worker accused of stealing a bucket of nails.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Relentless
Theater Wit

The scholarly history of African immigrants in North America is all too often restricted to the topics of slavery (abolished by white men in 1863) and civil-rights unrest (attendant on anti-war protests in the 1960s)—myopic views reinforcing popular stereotypes of a rootless minority awaiting rescue by their betters. The lingering prevalence of this narrow focus is why every minute of Tyla Abercrumbie's long-anticipated play, Relentless, arrives accompanied by tacit fanfares heralding its divergence from the same shopworn narratives.

Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Black No More
Pershing Square Signature Center

The African-American experience in different decades of the 20th Century is explored with ingenuity and passion in two new Off-Broadway musicals. Both feature eclectic and captivating scores, but whereas the operatic Intimate Apparel succeeds in telling a relatable story, Black No More, produced by The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center, pushes too hard to make its valid points. A rap-hip-hop stage adaptation of George S. Schuyler’s 1931 satiric novel, Black No More imagines a machine that transforms black people into whites.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Music Man, The
Winter Garden Theater

The question on every theater fan’s mind for two years has been: Will the highly anticipated revival of The Music Man, Meredith Willson’s beloved 1957 tribute to chicanery, Americana, and apple pie, be worth all the hype? The production, helmed by the magic-touch showman Jerry Zaks (the Bette Midler Hello, Dolly!) and starring two of Broadway’s most charismatic, Tony-winning stars, Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, was slated to open just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down theaters around the world.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Learned Ladies, The
Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts - Cook Theater

For the 400th anniversary of the birth of the Western World’s foremost author of dramatic comedy, FSU/Asolo Conservatory not only provides a verse-filled comedic treat but a visual one, as well. The Learned Ladies of Moliere’s play exemplify both as they act to dominate family and anyone who’d join or even serve them. Since learning, especially use of language, is their weapon, isn’t it fitting that Moliere’s French alexandrines be well translated to English iambic pentameter lines that their antagonists won’t be able to use against them? Or will they? 

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
It's Alive, IT'S ALIVE!
Odyssey Theater

The outrageous performance artist, John Fleck, is back with another stage piece of his, It’s Alive, IT’S ALIVE!. The show is raising hell at the Odyssey for a month-long run, directed by Fleck’s longtime collaborator, David Schweizer.  Fleck is joined onstage by two supporting actors, Kyle G. Fuller and Tomoko Karina, and a musical duo, John Snow (bass) and Scott Roberts (keyboard). Together these partners in theatrical crime poke fun at a slew of targets: The Virus, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, Trump, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and much, much more.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Detained
Fountain Theater

Immigration detention, the shame of America, is the subject of Detained the brave and shocking docudrama which is in a world-premiere run at the Fountain Theater.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Garden of the Finzi-Continis, The
Museum of Jewish Heritage - Edmond J. Safra Hall

Despite countless closings, postponements, cancellations, empty seats, Covid interventions, and the annoying requirement of having to wear a mask, present proof of a vaccination with a valid government issued photo ID, and go through a security check, even before you enter the theater, New York City’s theater scene appears to be chugging along, surprisingly so, with an abundance of better-than-usual fare.

Edward Rubin
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Power of Sail
Geffen Playhouse - Gil Cates Theater

Harvard professor Charles Nichols (the estimable Bryan Cranston) opens a can of worms when he invites a notorious white nationalist to speak at an annual lecture series. Nichols, a firm believer in the 1st Amendment, thinks that everyone has a right to speak his mind, even if he’s a racist and an anti-Semite.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Laughing Matters (Variant 6)
Florida Studio Theater - Court Cabaret

Newest edition of Florida Studio Theatre’s musical, comedic Laughing Matters highlights Pandemic-induced Paranoia regarding political and cultural issues. Local to national, they include boisterous responses to mandates and various means of distancing from physical problems. In song and sketches, Sarasota and Florida issues like over-development get skewered along with national ones like pollution and inflation. 

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Slave Play
Mark Taper Forum

Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play was written six years ago when the African-American playwright was a student at Yale. His play, which deals with race and sexuality in the USA, is very much a young man’s work, packed with scatological humor, wild experimentation and provocative ideas. Thanks to its boldness and power, the play was produced off-Broadway (by New York Theatre Workshop) when Harris was still a student.  It then went to Broadway in 2019 and received twelve Tony nominations , sparking controversy the whole time.

Willard Manus
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Music Man, The
Winter Garden Theater

How amazing do you have to be to make Sutton Foster slip into the background? Just as good as Hugh Jackman. It's not a fair contest. Jackman is so magnetic that when he's onstage, you don't notice anyone else. And when he's not, you wish for him to come back. That smile alone is so totally irresistible. No wonder people are mesmerized by this Harold Hill.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Play That Goes Wrong, The
Florida Studio Theater - Gompertz

In The Play that Goes Wrong, there are actually two plays that do so. One is an English mystery about a 20th century murder at a fictional Haversham Manor  The  other is the mystery play’s presentation by The West Palmetto Drama Society.  What goes absolutely right is Florida Studio Theater’s production of both, in which everybody and everything that goes wrong come off to hilarious perfection. 

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Skeleton Crew
Samuel J. Friedman Theater

It's hard to imagine drinking coffee, changing clothes, or having a serious conversation in the break room at this factory. But in this one set show, that's where the action is.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Great Leap, The
Florida State University for the Performing Arts - Mertz Theater

As part of the years China took The Great Leap to be an International leader, 1958 up to 1989, China invited and hosted Americans in sports exhibition games against its top players. Lauren Yee’s play, The Great Leap, features a school basketball team from San Francisco in such a competition in 1989. The piece focuses, though, on both competitors’ coaches and particularly a seemingly unlikely U.S. player of Chinese descent. So doing, it reveals not only personal histories but links up with major political ones that span decades.

Marie J. Kilker
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Prayer for the French Republic
City Center - Stage 1

 “It’s the suitcase or the coffin,” bluntly explains a character in Prayer for the French Republic, Joshua Harmon’s somewhat overlong, but ultimately moving drama ostensibly about one family of French Jews, but it’s really about the state of European and all Jewry. The man uttering the unvarnished, but pragmatic assessment of what it means to be a Jew is Charles Benhamou (solid Jeff Seymour), a father and husband contemplating moving his family from a comfortable, upper-middle-class existence in Paris to an unknown situation in Israel.

Dave Lefkowitz
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Long Day's Journey into Night
Minetta Lane Theater

Transposing classic plays into modern eras has been an accepted theatrical technique for quite a while now. Moving these timeless works into a contemporary setting can illuminate their universal themes and bring insight to current issues. But these time-warp productions have mostly been for Shakespearean texts. Few more recent classics have switched time frames, probably because we are too familiar with their original settings to accept any updating.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
MJ
Neil Simon Theater

Even before MJ begins, the excitement in the air is palpable. Some people who don't like Michael Jackson, for one reason or another, but none of them are in the audience.

Michall Jeffers
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Intimate Apparel
Lincoln Center - Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

The African-American experience in different decades of the 20th Century is explored with ingenuity and passion in two new Off-Broadway musicals. Both feature eclectic and captivating scores, but unlike the overly obvious Black no More, Intimate Apparel, at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, succeeds in telling its relatable story to become an integrated and powerful piece.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
Hang, The
HERE

Taylor Mac is an award-winning playwright-performer whose works seen on, Off, and Off-Off-Broadway question not only gender norms but also conventional dramatic structure. His bizarre musical entertainment The Hang  eschews traditional elements such as story and character to focus on a celebration of queerness in a free-form spectacle which is part party, part philosophical debate, and part funeral rite.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2022
English
Atlantic Theater - Linda Gross Theater

Our relationship with language is the subject of Sanaz Toossi’s perceptive new play English, presented in a taut and affecting production by Knud Adams in a co-production from Atlantic Theater Company and Roundabout Theater Company. It’s so refreshing to hear from a new voice and gain perspective outside the American kitchen sink.

David Sheward
Date Reviewed:
February 2022

Pages