Two elements overpower the current production of Redwood now playing at the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway. One is the extraordinary voice of Idina Menzel, and the other is the equally extraordinary projection design by Hana S. Kim. In Tina Landau’s hyper-emotional new play, the protagonist Jesse (played by Menzel) is an art gallerist, living in New York…
Helen Schneider, Lucca Züchner (Photo: Maria Baranova) Last Call By Julia Polinsky In 2025, it’s challenging to remember that the 1930s and 40s shaped the rest of the 20th century culturally as well as economically and politically. In Last Call, the world premiere play by Peter Danish now at New World Stages, remind us of…
Dakin Matthews (Photo: Hollis King) Henry IV By Deirdre Donovan Theatre for a New Audience’s (TFANA) revival of Shakespeare’s Henry IV opened the 2025 season at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Directed by Eric Tucker, and in a three-act adaptation written by Dakin Matthews, who also stars in the titular role, this production is heaven-sent. The…
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…
Theatre lovers beat the mid-winter blues at the 10th Annual Broadway Convention (BroadwayCon) at the New York Marriott Marquis, joining the theater community in celebration of live stage performance. The three-day event was packed with performances, in-depth panel discussions, workshops, and cast reunions. Here’s a recap of just two of the many events. Lin-Manuel Miranda:…
Gypsy – that revered American musical – is back on Broadway! Led by six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, and directed by the legendary George C. Wolfe, this much-anticipated revival features three Black women in principal roles, bringing a whole new vibe to the classic. Suggested by the memoirs of burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee,…
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…
What and how you speak: this is who you are. That is the idea behind Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, English, now at the Roundabout. A co-production with the Atlantic Theater Company, English is set a classroom in Iran, where students are preparing for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). English presents…
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…
There are two kinds of people: those who are willing to be enchanted by magic shows, and those who are all about figuring it out. Whether or not enchantment works for you, spending 90 minutes with Vinny DePonto’s Mindplay will be a delight. DePonto delivers patter like a showman, introducing the illusions and weaving a…