Written by: Tom Schulman Directed and adapted by: John Doyle By Rachel Goddard Almost thirty years since Dead Poets Society inspired us to seize the day on the silver screen, director John Doyle (The Color Purple) takes Tom Schulman’s Academy Award winning script to the stage. Presented by Classic Stage Company, Dead Poets Society features…
Corey Stoll and Rachel Weisz Photo credit: Joan Marcus. by Eugene Paul We arrive in timely fashion at the hustle and bustle of the Public Theater, its snack bar front and center busily purveying whatevers, and to one side and another individual giving away tickets. Hmmm. Later, when we’ve thought about it, what’s additionally discomfiting is…
Jennifer Ikeda, Raymond Lee photos by Carol Rosegg By Eugene Paul With great gusto, ribaldry rampant, rollicking humor and a painfully savage message, playwright Qui Nguyen revisits the Vietnam War and its aftermath through the experiences of its war tossed victims, at least those tossed into the United States, and the picture…
Photos by Joan Marcus By Ron Cohen Student-teacher relationships get a workout in Two Class Acts, the umbrella name for two one-acts by A. R. Gurney, being premiered in repertory at the Flea Theater. While esteemed playwright Gurney made his name as an incisive and bemused chronicler of the declining stature in…
Courtesy of Onassis Cultural Center New York. Photos by Beowulf Sheehan by Deirdre Donovan If you want to get a firm handle on Sophocles’ Antigone, look no further than Lena Kitsopoulou’s Antigone: Lonely Planet. Kitsopoulou wrote, directed, and performed in her new play, specially commissioned for the Antigone Now Festival at the Gallery at…
Elizabeth Van Dyke By R. Pikser Not only important history but breathtaking performances A theatrical biography could be tedious, but Laurence Holder’s 20 year old piece about the life of Zora Neale Hurston, mounted again in celebration of the 125th anniversary of her birth, is stunning. As narrated by Ms. Hurston at…
David Hyde Pierce By Michall Jeffers David Hyde Pierce is lovable. There’s a vulnerability and a wry humor that’s totally endearing; from the moment he steps on stage, the audience is with him. This proves to be almost a liability as the play progresses. The show opens with Pierce, as Nate Martin, delivering a…
Jimoon Cole, Nilaja Sun and cast photos by Russ Rowland By Ron Cohen A provocative and slimmed down adaptation of Ibsen’s drama of civic corruption vibrates with timely relevance “People who don’t vote should be arrested and charged with evasion of duty,” says a character early on in Public Enemy. It’s…
Photo Credit: Jeff Farkash by Julia Polinsky Wandering Bark’s speed-dating pace cuts Ibsen’s problem play down to a 90-minute, high-concept version. Clickbait-worthy headlines on the promotional material (“Hedda Tesman (nee Gabler) has everything, but wants none of it.”), and those parentheses around her name: these clues, among others, send you all kinds…
Phillip James Brannon I Joan Marcus Nat Turner in Jerusalem By Ron Cohen A powerful play and a discomfiting depiction of the malaise bred by slavery on the American soul. The hot buttons of racism get pushed with poetic fervor and chilling contemporary resonance in Nathan Alan Davis’s Nat Turner in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem of…