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…
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…
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…