Contributing Writer
Sullivan Jones (Credit: Carol Rosegg) By Ron Cohen He was a genius scientist whose dream of space travel sent an American to the moon. He was a genius scientist whose dream of space travel created the rockets for Nazi Germany that rained death and destruction on London and Belgium during the final year…
By Ron Cohen Final Follies, with its prophetic title, was the last play written by prolific and well-applauded playwright A. R. Gurney, who died in June 2017. The one-act work further cements Gurney’s already rock-solid reputation as the wit-filled chronicler of the diminishment of the human species known as Wasp. In case you’ve…
What the Constitution Means to Me By Ron Cohen It could be described as a civics lesson disguised as a play…or vice versa. Or it could be called a personal family memoir, relating the years of domestic violence and disparagement endured by women, abuse and inequality tacitly supported or ignored by the Constitution….
Ahmed Aly Elsayed, Ethan Hova, Ben Schnetzer photos by Joan Marcus By Ron Cohen You may not be enticed into becoming a snooker fan by The Nap, but you’ll probably enjoy the hubbub that surrounds the game in this British comedy, being given its Broadway premiere by Manhattan Theatre Company. The play is…
By Ron Cohen “No matter how much you loved how beautifully I might play the ingenue, it was always beneath me. It is beneath all women.” So declares the legendary French actress Sarah Bernhardt, as portrayed by the acclaimed English actress Janet McTeer in Bernhardt/Hamlet by the esteemed American playwright Theresa Rebeck. It’s…
Shane O’Regan in Private Peaceful.(c) Ahron R. Foster Private Peaceful By Ron Cohen The senseless destruction and horrors of war – and in this particular case, World War I, the catastrophe erroneously labeled “the war to end all wars” — have been well documented. But when the focus is narrowed down to show…
By Ron Cohen In The House that Will Not Stand, Marcus Gardley delves into one of the many perverse chapters in the insidious annals of slavery: the sale by France of the Louisiana Territory to the United States in the early 19th Century. It meant that the African-Americans living in New Orleans…
Rick Holmes, Jordan Lage, Meredith Forlenza, Kristen Bush, Laura Kai Chen By Ron Cohen Both the haves and the have-nots get their knocks in Anthony Giardina’s Dan Cody’s Yacht, a relentless examination of the crossroads of education and affluence. It’s a serious and pertinent theme, and Giardina, a well-practiced playwright (The City of…
By Ron Cohen What is the nature of the human heart? Does it have memory, emotion, conscience? Is it an extension of the soul, or the soul itself? Or is it only the engine of our physical being, an organ pumping blood to keep us alive? These are the questions Nilo Cruz plays with in…
Pamela J. Gray & Stephanie Roth Haberle photos by Carol Rosegg By Ron Cohen Deathbed dramas with expiring ladies seem to be thing this spring. Right on the heels of the superb revival of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Woman comes the brilliant Woman and Scarecrow by Marina Carr, being given an exhilarating production…