Stephen Payne, Josh Charles, Armie Hammer and Paul Schneider in Straight White Men at the Helen Hayes Theater, New York. Photo: Joan Marcus Straight White Men By Eugene Paul What in hell? Oh. Provocation. Getting us, the audience, off on the wrong foot with that yowling souped up caterwauling. And that curtain? Entirely…
Condola Rashad photos by Joan Marcus by Deirdre Donovan George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan is a comedy, tragedy and romance wrapped into one powerful drama. Over the years, it has been staged in strikingly different ways from the raucous to the subdued. As the Manhattan Theatre Club presents it (at the Samuel J. Friedman…
Jamie Parker and Sam Clemmett photo credit Manuel Harlen by Julia Polinsky Harry Potter. Hardly are those words out before people react. For years, J. K. Rowling’s creation has inspired adoration and fandom on the Olympic scale. But without the depth of a book’s narration, or the tricks and trappings…
Tom Hollander photo credit Joan Marcus by Julia Polinsky “Early Stoppard.” If those words thrill you, fill you with fantastic longing for great theater, you’re in for a treat. You’ll revel in every moment of the Menier Chocolate Factory’s production of Travesties, Stoppard’s giddy, delightful, 1974 word-nerd talkfest. Be grateful to the Roundabout…
Denzel Washington and the Company of ‘The Iceman Cometh’ PHOTO: JULIETA CERVANTES By Ron Cohen You wouldn’t want to stay overnight at Harry Hope’s Saloon and flophouse in Greenwich Village, circa 1912. It’s a place inhabited by down-and-outers, has-beens and never-beens. But for nearly four hours, these folks as portrayed in this George C….
Courtesy of Joan Marcus by Julia Polinsky Des McAnuff, who ably demonstrated with Jersey Boys that he knows how to do a really good jukebox musical, directs Summer: The Donna Summer Musical at breakneck speed and with all the depth of a Wikipedia entry. The show can’t make up its mind…
Erika Henningsen, Ashley Park, Taylor Louderman, Kate Rockwell photos by Joan Marcus by Deirdre Donovan The morphing of the 2004 hit film Mean Girls to a musical is drawing a lot of young millennials to the August Wilson Theatre nowadays. But if you think that only scrub-faced teens are in the audience, think again. …
Lauren Ridloff and Joshua Jackson photos by Matthew Murphy By Ron Cohen The wonders of speech and sound, the mysteries of silence and the entanglements of love are interwoven into a deeply moving tapestry in Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God. Now the drama, whose original Broadway production garnered it a…
Caissie Levy, Patti Muran by Julia Polinsky Speaking as the one and only American who never saw Frozen: The Movie, it was good to come on Frozen: The Broadway Musical from cold, so to speak. Surprise! No surprises! Basic, fantastically successful Disney format. Simple-ish story (absent parents, child who masters obstacles, grows up,…
Bill (Chris), one of New York’s not-so-finest, and Jeff (Michael Cera), a high-rise security guard, don’t see eye-to-eye in “Lobby Hero.” (JOAN MARCUS) By Marc Miller First, the theater. The Helen Hayes has been acquired by Second Stage, somehow lost the Helen, and undergone a needed renovation. The Hayes, at 597 seats Broadway’s…