Katie Holmes and Eddie Kaye Thomas in The Wanderers. (Photo by Joan Marcus) The Wanderers By David Schultz and Julia Polinsky David: Playwright Anna Ziegler’s overly stuffed The Wanderers has quite a lot on its mind. The comingling of past and present at first seems confusing, but the story does settle eventually with a…
Matt de Rogatis, Courtney Henggeler, and Frederick Weller in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Photo by Ismaeel Skalli Cat on a Hot Tin Roof By Cammy Paglia Tennessee Williams grappled with his many demons, internalized homophobia and alcoholism being the most monstrous. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, for which…
Nancy Ma, Kim Wuan (Photo: Russ Rowland) Warrior Sisters of Wu By Julia Polinsky The tag line for Damon Chua’s delightful play, Warrior Sisters of Wu, is “Romance of the Three Kingdoms meets Pride and Prejudice.” Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a classic Chinese epic and billions of people have known and loved this…
Roger Dominic Casey, Tom Holcomb. (Photo: Jeremy Daniel) Aristocrats By Deirdre Donovan “I’m suddenly sick of Chopin — isn’t it strange?” asks Claire in the final scene of Brian Friel’s Aristocrats, but audiences visiting the Irish Repertory Theatre’s revival of his 1979 play may well hear Claire’s cri de coeur as…
Eric Yang and Amy Kim Waschke. (Photo: Ahron R. Foster) The Far Country By Fern Siegel Immigration is a hot topic of debate. But the searing human cost is often lost in weaponizing it. Lloyd Suh’s The Far Country, now at the Atlantic Theater Company, reveals a tragic period in American history, the…
The Rat Trap By Marc Miller First, a bit of history. It’s 1918, and young Noel Coward is performing in other people’s plays while trying to write his own. Under these busy circumstances he concocts The Rat Trap, which, it is speculated, he conceives to star himself and his great friend, the celebrated young actress…
Francesca Carpanini,Austin Pendleton, Angelina Fiordellisi, Uly Schlesinger Photo by Emilio Madrid This Beautiful Future By Marc Miller This Beautiful Future could have been sweet. A World War II love story, and how many of those do we get anymore, where the nice young couple overcome cultural differences, grope toward greater understanding, and point their lives…
Nicholas Barasch (center). (Carol Rosegg) Francie Brady is an energetic, but ballistic teenager with a seemingly cheeky disposition. But behind the red hair and sparkling eyes lurks a troubled boy who claims: “They were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs. Nugent.” The Butcher Boy, a musical now at the Irish…
Anastasia Hille in Oresteia, Park Avenue Armory, 2022 Photo: Joan Marcus Oresteia By Deirdre Donovan Aeschylus’ Oresteia is the kind of work that makes most directors go weak in the knees. Not Robert Ickes. British writer-director Ickes has grabbed the bull by the horns and astonishingly reworked the tragic trilogy for contemporary sensibilities. His Oresteia, currently running in repertory with Hamlet at the Park Avenue Armory, is not only a successful realization of the…
Jonathan Hadary, C.J. Wilson, Heather Burns, Marylouise Burke and Omar Metwally star in Brian Watkins’ Epiphany. (Jeremy Daniel) Epiphany By Fern Siegel There are epiphanies and the Epiphany. One is a sudden realization of the essential meaning of an idea or event. The other is an often-forgotten holiday celebrated on Jan. 6 that…