ALEC LEYZER BURKO, GERA SANDLER Photos: Pedro Hernandez By Eugene Paul The New Yiddish Rep returns after Moshe Yassur’s distinguished production in Yiddish there of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman with his earnest, underfed staging of Eugene Ionesco’s indigestible Rhinoceros, whose Yiddish translation – there are the necessary crutch of titles –…
Liza Colón-Zayas and Carrie Coon photos by Joan Marcus By Ron Cohen Be prepared to have your emotions shredded. Amy Herzog’s Mary Jane quietly pulls you into the life of its title character, a single mother caring for her chronically ill child, and never lets you go. And Herzog does this without any…
By Ron Cohen The story’s a little muddy, but director John Doyle and company still fill this trip to Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden with lots of happy sightseeing. Oscar- and Tony-winner Ellen Burstyn sits quietly on stage, atop a wardrobe trunk, a big book on her lap – presumably the collected works of…
By Eugene Paul Playwright Dan McCormick is having a valuable production of his play, The Violin, under splendidly sympathetic direction by Joseph Discher in an uncommonly atmospheric setting by Harry Feiner. Giovanni’s Tailor Shop. You can’t take your eyes off Gio’s musty, cluttered old tailor shop. Illuminating designer Harry Feiner has made…
Mark Shanahan (Walt Disney) and Stephen D’Ambrose (Igor Stravinsky)I Photo by Carol Rosegg By Eugene Paul Theater going is a joy unto itself, ramified by the thread of “Is this the one?” constantly running behind every visit even as each theater work has its separate world of creativity displayed for us to weigh,…
By Ron Cohen The leading character is named Hester, she is a single mom, and she does tote the letter “A” on her persona. Suzan-Lori Parks’ Fucking A was, as the playwright has frequently said, inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s mid-19th Century novel, The Scarlet Letter. But beyond these salient facts, the play bears…
C.J. Wilson and Mary McCann star in Simon Stephens’s On the Shore of the Wide World, directed by Neil Pepe, at Atlantic Theater Company. (© Ahron R. Foster) By Ron Cohen “it’s really difficult, isn’t it?… Just, the whole business of, you know, being alive. Very complicated,” says a loquacious cab driver toward the close…
by Marc Miller Noni Stapleton, and this is meant as a compliment, makes a great cow. As the title character of the one-woman show she wrote, Charolais, a headstrong French heifer on an Irish farm, Stapleton sashays around the barn and pasture, sniffs, moves her head and body in uncannily bovine ways, and cheers…
Sarah Nicole Deaver & A.J. Shively. Photo by Richard Termine. By Marc Miller The Mint Theater Company thinks very highly of Teresa Deevy—“undoubtedly the most brilliant playwright whose work I will ever have the privilege of re-introducing to the world,” writes artistic director Jonathan Bank in his program notes. Maybe, but the brilliance…
Nancy Opel photos by Mathew Murphy by Julia Polinsky Bobby Goldman’s Curvy Widow tells the story of a fifty-ish widow’s search for sex after marriage in an enjoyable, sweetly sexual musical that won’t challenge your attention span, with a cast of seasoned pros, and terrific production values. The story is a simple…