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…
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…
Robert Icke’s Olivier Award–winning Oedipus arrives on Broadway as a sleek, nerve-jangling thriller, propelled by Mark Strong and Lesley Manville reprising their celebrated West End roles. Set on a tense national election night where every revelation threatens to upend the future, this electrifying adaptation thrusts Sophocles’ tragedy into an urgent modern arena where destiny collides…
There’s a lot of star power on stage in the revival of Yasmina Reza’s ART, now at the Music Box. Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, and Neil Patrick Harris star in this revival, and at times, it seems like the audience clearly shows up to enjoy the cast more than the play. The three stars almost…
Feminism in the 1970s fought for recognition. And the issues — pay parity, better child care, economic equality and career advancement — remain. It’s thanks to those pioneering efforts, that many younger women take certain rights for granted today. But the women’s lib struggle, in Bess Wohl’s funny, smart, eye-opening play, is a potent reminder…
Jamie Lloyd’s Broadway revival of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot finds Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter trading Bill and Ted’s comic banter for Beckett’s haunting silences. With Brandon J. Dirden and Michael Patrick Thornton rounding out the cast, Lloyd once again turns minimalism into a bold theatrical statement. Before parsing the current production, it’s worth…
Punch, James Graham’s powerful new drama, is stunning Broadway audiences with an impact that lives up to its title. In short, it’s a knock-out. Known for his award-winning plays on an impressive variety of topics – This House (2012) on the British parliamentary history, Ink (2017) on the rise of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, and Dear…