Performance: Extraordinary. Story: Heartbreaking. Production: Challenging. Firmly in the school of “solo performance acting with video projections of the actor,” Nothing Can Take You From The Hand Of God gives its star, Jen Tullock, who wrote the play with Frank Winters, a superb opportunity to display her acting chops. Which are significant. She’s superb. She…
There’s a 1940 movie, The Mortal Storm, wherein an average family in the German Alps is divided and undone by the rise of the Third Reich, with tragic results. Since these earnest young Germans are played by James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Robert Young, and Robert Stack, it’s a bit of a challenge to take at…
This Is Not A Drill, now at the York Theatre, offers a pleasant enough way to pass a couple of hours in the theater. If there are no surprises, then also there’s something to be said about smooth sailing and just enjoying the show. The story of This Is Not A Drill follows 3 tourist…
Punch, James Graham’s powerful new drama, is stunning Broadway audiences with an impact that lives up to its title. In short, it’s a knock-out. Known for his award-winning plays on an impressive variety of topics – This House (2012) on the British parliamentary history, Ink (2017) on the rise of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, and Dear…
“Once you see, you can’t feign blind.” The line is courtesy of Stalin’s daughter Svetlana, commenting on perception and reality. Played to perfection by Dani Stoller, she is one of several compelling characters in Jonathan Spector’s This Much I Know, now off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters. Spector, who won a Tony for “Eureka Day,” a satiric…
Whip-smart, demanding, as aggressive and changeable as Rupert Murdoch himself, this new play by An Unnamed Source hits the highlights (and lowlights) of billionaire media mogul Murdoch’s mind. Heaven knows that may not be a comfortable place to visit. Jamie Jackson’s superb performance portrays a Medusa-like nest of snakes living inside Murdoch’s head. The media…
Take me to church. Please. Saturday Church, now playing at New York Theatre Workshop, opens with the magnificent, ebullient, Tony-winning, can-do-no-wrong J. Harrison Ghee as Black Jesus, asking, “Can I show y’all what collective love looks like? What collective joy looks like? What collective healing looks like?” As directed by Whitney White and based on…
The first major Off-Broadway staging of The Wild Duck has winged into Polonsky Shakespeare Center for a brief sojourn, in a co-production of Theatre for a New Audience and Shakespeare Theatre Company. David Eldridge’s new version infuses fresh energy into the old play. Directed by Simon Godwin—making his debut with Ibsen—this production arrives with the…
The king of the roast has traded his podium for the Broadway stage. In Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride, directed by Stephen Kessler, the Emmy-nominated comedian known for skewering Hollywood royalty serves up his most daring material yet — himself. Directed with an eye for intimacy and energy, the one-man show feels…
Irish Repertory Theatre’s fourth staging of Conor McPherson’s The Weir, directed by Ciarán McPherson, proves why the play has become one of the company’s touchstones. What begins as an evening of pub banter deepens into a spellbinding meditation on memory, loneliness, and connection. The intimacy of the production, sensitively directed by Ciarán O’Reilly, is its…