Ellen Lauren, Will Bond Photos by Maria Baranova By Eugene Paul Playcrafter Jocelyn Clarke, heeding director Anne Bogart’s long held desire to craft the extraordinary John Cage’s actual expressed revelations and conclusions regarding time, space, hearing, seeing, sllence, sound has done his darnedest so successfully you actually think Will Bond, as HE…
Joan Marcus Michael Emerson in ‘Wakey, Wakey’ By David Schultz The music of Maurice Ravel floats in your ears as you await the play to begin. The gradually escalating strains of Bolero reach their well-earned crashing crescendo, and then the lights shine brightly on a man facedown on the floor…as he gasps aloud “Is…
Rocco Sisto, Aya Cash & Erik Lochtefeld photos by Joan Marcus By Eugene Paul Irony of ironies. Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen and Oliver Butler are play crafters. The three of them generate ideas for a play, Bos and Thureen write, Butler steers the writing as much as the two authors and when…
Jimi Stanton as Gabriel. Photo by Jonathan Slaff by Julia Polinsky A great performance brightens Swedish family psychodrama Marty’s Shadow, by the Swedish playwright Stig Dagerman, dishes up enough family drama and psychological scarring to make a viewer’s heart bleed. Don’t let that put you off seeing this show; if you…
KK Moggie and Ted Koch Photo Credit: Marielle Solan By Ron Cohen The Gravedigger’s Lullaby sounds like it could be one of those Z-Grade horror flicks filling the multiplexes. It does have one genuinely horrific moment, but Jeff Talbott’s new drama is a thoughtful and articulate depiction of those subsisting on the bottom…
MONIQUE CARBONI By Eugene Paul Everything old is ghoulishly new again, Everyman is now Everybody and the sting remains. Here begynneth a treatise how ye hye fader of heven sendeth dethe to somon every creature to come and gyve a counte of theyr lyves in the worlde, and is in maner of a…
Jennifer Ikeda, Molly Ranson, and Janie Dee photo by Joan Marcus by Eugene Paul British star Janie Dee is Linda, stunning, successful, now 55. She wants it to mean something. Right off the bat, capturing the whirlwind success that Linda is and has become is the whirlwind setting by Walt…
Jordan Lage as Richard and Chris Bauer as Charles photos by Doug hamilton By Ron Cohen Psychiatry, journalism, the law and the Old Testament all get knocked pretty hard in David Mamet’s The Penitent. Summing up the play’s general attitude early on, the protagonist declares, “Human nature is evil.” Mamet’s misanthropic leanings can…
By Ron Cohen Steven Levenson, who has apparently hit pay dirt with his book for the new Broadway hit musical Dear Evan Hansen, scores again with If I Forget, a rich family drama being given an exemplary Off-Broadway production by Roundabout Theatre Company. The play takes us deeply into the complexities of life…
L-R: John Epperson, Matthew Broderick, Jill Eikenberry, Annapurna Sriram, Larry Pine, Claudia Shear By Ron Cohen Playwright Wallace Shawn has no compunctions about letting his characters talk on and on and on… So, it’s fitting that his latest effort, being presented by The New Group, is entitled Evening at the Talk House. And…