Reviews Archives

  • Sticks and Bones

    Ben Schnetzer, Holly Hunter, Bill Pullman and (standing) Raviv Ullman  Photos: Monique Carboni                                by David Schultz A revival of playwright David Rabe’s Tony Award winning play Sticks and Bones (1971) may prove to be the most moving and gut wrenching play in New York City at the moment. This seriously demented twist on the…

  • The River

    Hugh Jackman as The Man in THE RIVER, a new play by Jes Butterworth, directed by Ian Rickson, at Circle in the Square Theater (50th Street between Broadway and Eight Avenue). © Richard Termine                       by David Schultz What can the typical theatergoer expect when seeing the new play entitled  The River ? That’s presuming…

  • Side Show

    Emily Padgett as Daisy Hilton and Erin Davie as Violet Hilton                                    by Eugene Paul This heartbreakingly ambiguous entertainment, flecked with moments of beauty and laughter, is based on (a) a  true story, the wrenching history of Daisy and Violet Hilton, (b) a horror film, Freaks, the passionate brainstorm of Tod Browning, which ruined his…

  • The Oldest Boy

    by Eugene Paul Sarah Ruhl, whose bewitching, off-beat plays, The Clean House and In The Next Room both produced by Lincoln Center, resulted in the commissioning of a new play by Ruhl, has responded at last despite a spate of other works that have taken her precious time. The Oldest Boy is that curious result,…

  • The Belle of Amherst

    Joely Richardson stars in William Luce’s The Belle of Amherst, directed by Steve Cosson, at the Westside Theatre. (© Carol Rosegg)                                      By Deirdre Donovan Joely Richardson brings 19th Century poet Emily Dickinson alive in her one-woman performance at the West End Theatre. William Luce’s one-woman play about the great American poet Emily Dickinson arrives at…

  • Major Barbara

    Dan Daily, Hannah Cabell and Richard Gallagher                                      by Deirdre Donovan When you see the folks from the Salvation Army ringing their bells this year for donations to the poor, you just might muse upon Shaw’s young ambitious heroine Major Barbara, the titular character from George Bernard Shaw’s play of the same name.  It is…

  • NY Pops – By Special Request An Evening With The Orchestra

    Photographs by Richard Termine                                 By Stewart Schulman A concert where the orchestra was the star and the conductor its leading player. “By Special Request: An Evening With The Orchestra” was an artfully conceived and delightfully entertaining concert comprised of classic works by three 19th/20th century European masters (Part 1), favorites by three legendary New…

  • Wiesenthal

    Tom Dugan in Wiesenthal.  Photo credit: Carol Rosegg.                                             By Eugene Paul He keeps a mug at the water cooler and another one on his desk, the other end of the long, disheveled office, and another sort of half way between on a shelf of the stuffed book cases covering the office wall. He’s always sipping at…

  • Billy & Ray

      Larry Pine , Vincent Kartheiser,                             photos by Carol Rosegg                                       By Michall Jeffers  It’s hard for us to imagine a time when film noir was considered daring and even dangerous. We’ve seen so many parodies of men in fedoras with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, growling “Stick with me, Baby.” Billy & Ray…

  • Disgraced

    Gretchen Mol, Hari Dhillon ,Karen Pittman, and Josh Radnor            Photos by Joan Marcus                                               By Eugene Paul Riveting. If you’ve been too obsessed with what’s going on in the world to notice that Ayad Akhtar won an Obie for this, his play, Disgraced, in 2012, you’ll have to take notice now that it won the…