Editor
Julia Polinsky wrote, directed, produced, and starred in her first play when she was 7 years old. She’s been paying a lot of attention to theater ever since.
The Company. (Photo: Jeremy Daniel) Amid Falling Walls By Julia Polinsky The Holocaust. Hardly are those words out, when they evoke the mental image: black and white photos of people passively lined up to get on to boxcars; living skeletons; ghettos as filthy and unwelcoming as prisons; concentration camps, chimneys belching…
Hershey Felder (Photo: Hershey Felder Presents) Monsieur Chopin By Julia Polinsky Monsieur Chopin, Hershey Felder’s marvelous one-man presentation now at 59E59, is such a delightful combination of music and storytelling, that it would be a faux pas to miss a moment. Felder has perfected the art of performing the lives of illustrious musicians…
Ray Anthony Foster, Danny DeVito, Lucy DeVito (Photo: Joan Marcus) I Need That! By Julia Polinsky A bright and cheerful, three-character, 100-minute/no-intermission play starring a famous tv/movie actor: sounds like a formula for a hit. The audience for the Roundabout Theatre’s new production of I Need That responds as it should, laughing…
Alexis Fishman (Photo: Richard Rivera) Anne Being Frank Reviewed by Julia Polinsky The Diary of Anne Frank: who has not heard of it? Who doesn’t know the story of the hidden Jewish girl who memorably thought that people were good at heart, yet died in Bergen-Belsen? Who has not wondered what might have been? Well,…
Dominique Thorne; Some Kakoma (Photo: Matthew Murphy) Jaja’s African Hair Braiding Reviewed by Julia Polinsky On a hot summer day in 2019, a pre-pandemic time that now feels almost unimaginably remote, a group of women gather in a hair braiding shop in Harlem, a salon as brightly hot-pink and lively as scenic…
Leslie Odom, Jr., Kara Young (Photo: Marc J. Franklin) Purlie Victorious A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch Reviewed by Julia Polinsky Director Kenny Leon and the company of Purlie Victorious have brought to vivid life this in-your-face revival of Ossie Davis’s sixty-year-old play. Written in 1961, a century after the Civil…
Jeffrey Bean, Andrea Syglowski, Triney Sandoval (Photo: Justin Swader) Dig Reviewed by Julia Polinsky Is Theresa Rebeck’s new play, Dig, a terrific character study of troubled people, asking if anyone is beyond saving? A heart-rending meditation on truth and honesty? Is it “…tragical-comical-historical-pastoral?” Yes, and yes, and yes, and quite, quite wonderful. Under…
Christiana Clark and the cast of Flex (Photo: Marc J. Franklin) Flex By Julia Polinsky In Candrice Jones’s marvelous Flex, on the stage at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse theater, it’s 1997. The WNBA has just become a reality. Five teenage girls in Plainnole, Arkansas, are drilling, passing, shooting baskets. Sharpen your senses;…
Marie Mullen (Photo: Carol Rosegg) The Saviour By Julia Polinsky Who saves whom? And from what? Mothers tend to say that there are some topics unsuitable for polite conversation. In The Saviour, Deirdre Kinahan’s marvelous play currently running at the Irish Repertory Theater, the formidable Maire hits on most of them, chiefly religion and sex….
Jodie Comer in “Prima Facie.” (Photo: Browen Sharp/Caz Lock) Prima Facie By Julia Polinsky In Prima Facie, Tessa Ensler (Jodie Comer), a criminal defense attorney from a working-class family background, has worked hard at law school and achieved great success in the English legal system. Often, she successfully defends men accused of sexual assault….