Ohio State Murders By Julia Polinsky It must be said: Audra McDonald is a force of nature, and her performance in Ohio State Murders is wrenchingly, devastatingly sublime. Those are fighting words, perhaps, but it would be hard to find another single actor who could drive a play about race, murder, failure, and success, while…
The Piano Lesson by Cammy Paglia Tony Award nominee Latanya Richardson Jackson makes her directorial debut in the Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Piano Lesson, a masterpiece that not only tugs on your soul, it forces the mind to venture into the ugly truth which underlies the story of America’s shameful…
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins in Topdog/Underdog. Photo: Marc J. Franklin Topdog/Underdog Review by Julia Polinsky Topdog/Underdog tells the story of two brothers — Black men — endlessly vacillating between contempt and admiration for each other; affection and anger; conflict and cooperation; who’s winning, who’s losing. Named for an American president and his assassin,…
Review by Julia Polinsky Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt weaves a tale of family, place, time, and identity. The family is Jewish, the place Vienna, the time surrounds the Holocaust, and the question of identity is answered with a very hard kick. Leopoldstadt’s five acts, which occur in 1899, 1900, 1924, 1938 and 1955, take place in…
Review by Julia Polinsky Cost of Living switches back and forth in time and place, interleaving the stories of two couples, with a prologue out of chronological order (Jo Bonney’s seamless direction helps hugely). Both couples consist of a caregiver and “differently-abled” partner in a wheelchair; blue-collar Eddie (David Zayas) and his estranged wife Ani,…
Reza Salazar, Kara Young, Ron Cephas Jones, Edmund Donovan (Joan Marcus) Clyde’s By Lynn Nottage Directed by Kate Whoriskey Reviewed by Julia Polinsky It’s such a relief to laugh in the theater again that it might escape you that, really, Clyde’s is a morality play: a demon and a boddhisattva wrestle for the…
(l to r): Michael Zegen ( Al Manners ) , Alex Mickiewicz ( Eddie Fenton ) , Don Stephenson ( Bill O’Wray ) Photo: Joan Marcus Trouble in Mind By Alice Childress Reviewed by Julia Polinsky Originally an off-Broadway success in the 1950s, the play was slated to move to Broadway, but the producers wanted…
Chicken & Biscuits by Deirdre Donovan What’s cookin’ on Broadway? Douglas Lyons’ uproarious new comedy that recently opened at Circle in the Square. Under the direction of Zhailon Levingston, it’s overly long, but if you want to see a play…
Jerry O’Connell Blair Underwood photos by Joan Marcus A Soldier’s Play By Eugene Paul Playwright Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize play, A Soldier’s Play is finally getting its Broadway due in this gripping Roundabout Theatre production and I hope it runs as long as it did when the Negro Ensemble Company produced it back in…
Jane Alexander, and James Cromwell Joan Marcus Grand Horizons by Eugene Paul Carole Rothman, artistic director of 2ndStage has done us an enormous favor by braving the winds of juke box musicals currently sweeping through town and bestowing upon the Great White Way a mostly comedy – New Yorkers love to laugh – family…