Mia Barron, Abubakr Ali (Photo: Matthew Murphy) Dakar 2000 By Julia Polinsky Playwright Rajiv Joseph, who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and twice won the Obie, offer us Dakar 2000, a slick, twisty two-hander at Manhattan Theater Club’s City Center venue. Set in the last few days before Y2K, which at this point…
F. Murray Abraham (Photo: Carol Rosegg) Beckett Briefs: From the Cradle to the Grave By Carol Rocamora An arresting assemblage of rarely performed one-acts, now playing at the Irish Repertory Theatre, provides audiences with a thrilling theatrical experience. In seventy-five shocking minutes, three short plays by Samuel Beckett manage to take us on an entire…
Andrew Garman, Amelia Workman, Julius Rinzel (Photo: Emilio Madrid) The Antiquities By Julia Polinsky Two women, one heavily pregnant, dressed in the style of the early 19th Century, stand at the front of the dimly lit stage, and peer out into the audience as if it were a museum display. “Thank you for coming,” they…
Ella Dershowitz (Photo: Valerie Terranova) Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library By Julia Polinsky A basement prison cell: white walls, high windows. Two chairs, a desk, a door. A young man (Brett Temple) in a German army uniform of the early 1930s hustles in a young woman (Ella Dershowitz). He demands her purse,…
Susan Kelechi Watson, Crystal Dickinson, Lauren E. Banks, Adrienne C. Moore. (Photo: Julieta Cervantes) The Blood Quilt By Deirdre Donovan Of all the productions opening this season, Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt at Lincoln Center best illuminates the African American experience. Under the direction of Lileana Blain-Cruz, this thousand-thread show, awash with 100 quilts and…
Richard Topol, José Espinosa (Photo: Pavel Antonov) The Merchant of Venice By Deirdre Donovan The Arlekin Players Theatre’s new production of The Merchant of Venice at the Classic Stage Company, adapted and directed by Igor Golyak, is a wild and wooly take on Shakespeare’s great work about anti-Semitism and bigotry. Although it brings some fresh…
The cast of Shit.Meet.Fan. (Photo: Julieta Cervantes) Shit. Meet. Fan. By David Schultz Based on a 2016 Italian film, “Perfect Strangers,” this slick, shallow production attempts to update the tale from the film. In fits and starts, it has its perverse amusements, but in the long run it runs out of steam well before the…
Scott Shepherd (Photo: Joan Marcus) Gatz By Deirdre Donovan Gatz is back! The Elevator Repair Service’s (ESR) verbatim reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby returns to the Public Theater for its swan song. Directed by John Collins, and starring Scott Shepherd as Nick, this encore production is truly a gift to theatergoers who…
Dominic Weintraub, William Strom, Hugo Williams, and Claire Bird (Photo: Teddy Wolff) Burnout Paradise By Deirdre Donovan The live game show Burnout Paradise, now making its North American debut at St. Ann’s Warehouse, is experimental theater at its best and zaniest. Directed, written, designed, and performed by Australia’s Pony Cam, a collective based in Melbourne,…
Joseph Kloska, Kenneth Branagh (Photo: Marc J. Franklin) King Lear By Deirdre Donovan The legendary theater director Peter Brook compared King Lear to a mountain whose summit has never been reached. Actor-director Kenneth Branagh seems to have taken that observation as an invitation to scale what is arguably Shakespeare’s greatest achievement. But although Branagh grabs…