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…
The woman behind me kept murmuring, “Oh, my God, oh, my God.” She was responding to the parade of indignities and setbacks being visited upon our protagonist in The Fear of 13, Lindsey Ferrentino’s docudrama at the James Earl Jones. She was also perhaps more involved than she’d otherwise have been because that protagonist was…
A deliriously camp send-up that gleefully rewrites pop culture history, Titanique finds Céline Dion commandeering the Titanic’s legacy with a jukebox score and a wink that never fades. Yet for all its riotous invention and winning performances, this Broadway transfer can feel like a tidal wave of gags—so relentless at times that audiences may find…
“What’s a Jellicle Cat?” In 1982, when Cats first prowled onto Broadway, the answer was strange but straightforward. In Cats: The Jellicle Ball, that question lands very differently. Still drawing from T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, this revival trades the junkyard for the Ballroom, reimagining the…
The walls of the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway are shaking, as the overpowering revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman takes the stage. Directed by Joe Mantello, featuring a formidable ensemble, this landmark production reminds us why critic Kennth Tynan called it the greatest American play ever written. This cavernous Broadway theatre is…
In August 1972, a Chase Bank robbery gone wrong quickly turned into one of the biggest media circuses in New York City history. Although the vault was half-empty, the robbers, John (“Sonny”) Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile, did collect monies — until a teller tripped an alarm and the police arrived. The robbers then took eight…
It’s a rare occurrence when you sit in a theatre and hear audible gasps from audience members around you, in response to what’s happening onstage. Such was my experience at the end of the first of act of Giant, the devastating new award-winning import from London now on Broadway. The gasps of horror came in…
Ice cream, a much-needed sneeze, the smell of old books, depression, suicide. After a child’s first encounter with loss comes a list of small, fleeting joys set against life’s heaviest realities. At its core, it’s one young man’s struggle to find brightness in the everyday while growing up in a fractured family. So he begins…
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…