Writer
Roses are red; violets are blue. David loves theater, and hopes you do, too.
Playwright Matthew Leavitt’s new play, Sukkot, recently presented at 59E59, dealt awkwardly with issues of death, life, grief, and joy. The plot in a nutshell: One year after losing his Jewish wife to breast cancer, non-Jew Patrick Sullivan (Andy Robinson) is still trying to overcome his deep grief, until a rabbi on a telephone zoom…
Who would have thought watching people behaving badly could be so much fun? Now at the Hayes Theatre, and directed by Trip Cullman with bloodthirsty zeal, this revival of the Pulitzer-nominated Becky Shaw seems even fresher than it did in its Off-Broadway run almost 20 years ago. Playwright Gina Gionfriddo toys with our initial perception…
Tracy Letts’ bullet train of a play, Bug, has moved to Broadway from a more modest run in its 2004 Off-Broadway debut. Twenty years ago, this intense play was both insanely entertaining and extremely disturbing; playing in a small, intimate house back then, it was claustrophobic and eerie. Now presented in a much larger venue,…
What would it be like to conjure up a long-deceased family member and talk to them again in the twilight of your years? With Marjorie Prime, now at the Hayes, playwright Jordan Harrison has just done it, twice actually. Premiering originally in 2015 at The Mark Taper Forum, then in its New York premiere at…
Playwright Samuel D. Hunter makes his Broadway debut with this play that originally premiered last year at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Little Bear Ridge Road takes place in Idaho, somewhere on the outskirts of Troy, a desolate spot that is as foreign as the moon. That the action happens during the Covid pandemic, 2020-2022, only…
The highly regarded Irish theatre company, Druid, has returned to New York City with a limited run of Samuel Beckett’s Theatre of the Absurd classic, Endgame. In a rare coincidence, Beckett’s more famous Waiting for Godot is currently running on Broadway with a starry cast, drawing in huge crowds. This Off-Broadway play at the Irish…
It’s beyond unusual to start a show with the stars taking a bow. But Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone wield such theatrical clout that, as they walk onstage in The Roommate at the Booth Theatre, winding through designer Bob Crowley’s suggestive, minimalist stage, they get a round of applause, then walk off. And then the…
After two sold out runs downtown, this probing drama has moved to Broadway. Director Michael Herwitz marshals this two-hander with an undercurrent of suspense that quickly intensifies as the evening progresses. Written by 26-year-old playwright Max Wolf Friedlich, this 80-minute roller coaster ride jolts audiences from the first scene, as Jane (Sydney Lemmon), shakily aims…
A new theatrical adaption of Sarah Gruen’s popular 2006 novel, Water for Elephants, has set up its Big Top smack in Times Square. Wonder of wonders, it culls much from the novel and trims the excess to streamline the drama to its fullest extent. As in most adaptations, there inevitably are dry patches with the…