Sometimes, less is more. Theater aficionados know George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion as the inspiration for the Lerner and Loewe musical “My Fair Lady.” What’s less known is that Shaw based his work on a Greek myth. An artist prays for his marble sculpture to turn into a real woman — and Aphrodite grants his wish….
The highly regarded Irish theatre company, Druid, has returned to New York City with a limited run of Samuel Beckett’s Theatre of the Absurd classic, Endgame. In a rare coincidence, Beckett’s more famous Waiting for Godot is currently running on Broadway with a starry cast, drawing in huge crowds. This Off-Broadway play at the Irish…
If the words “climate-change thriller” make you wonder if you’ve heard wrong, you haven’t. Kyoto, now at the Mitzi E. Newhouse in a stylish, nearly-immersive production that makes great use of their almost-theater-in-the-round stage, is indeed thrilling—at times. Even if just thinking about climate change makes you want to nap, you likely won’t. That’s partly…
The issues of power and rule in Shakespeare’s Richard II, now playing at the Astor Place Theatre, feel painfully present and even prophetic. They are expressed urgently by Red Bull’s riveting revival, featuring a charismatic Michael Urie in the title role. Richard’s story (set in 1398) is both a compelling and a complicated one. In…
“Do you think it’s worth it to be here?” That is only one of the many probing, painful questions posed in Queens, Martyna Majok’s lacerating 2018 drama about immigrant women in crisis, now playing in an updated version at Manhattan Theatre Club. Set in the basement of a boarding house in Queens, the play gives…
André De Shields presides over Tartuffe with a velvet-gloved authority that turns Molière’s satire into something intimate, hypnotic, and deliciously treacherous. Staged in the lavish library of House of the Redeemer, this candlelit production unfolds just feet from its audience, making hypocrisy feel both timeless—and uncomfortably close. Long before Tartuffe became a staple of the…
For 30 years, Northern Ireland was plagued by “The Troubles,” a civil war between Protestant loyalists, who wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the U.K., and Catholic republicans (IRA) fighting for a united Ireland. The third combatant was the British Army. The civilian toll was terrible and when the Good Friday Agreement was struck in…
Don’t be misled by the title of Caroline, the remarkable new work by Preston Max Allen now playing at The Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space. It refers to a nine-year-old who has chosen that name for her new identity – as a girl. She announces her choice to her mother in the play’s first…
Did You Eat?, the current offering from the Ma-Yi Theater Company’s residence at the Public Theater, belongs firmly in the realm of solo performances standing in for therapy, with an excellent performer but a difficult book. In Did You Eat?, Korean-American Zoë Kim, the playwright and performer, shepherds the audience through a lifetime – her…
The 2024 Sony Pictures release Saturday Night dramatizes, and I use the term loosely, the chaos and anarchy that preceded the launch of NBC’s Saturday Night (the Live didn’t happen till the second season) on October 11, 1975. While it illustrates the frantic tugs-of-war among cast members, producer Lorne Michaels, and the NBC brass, it…