Anton Chekhov’s four-act drama Ivanov took him only ten days to write. First performed in 1887, the play was not well received, but the author successfully revised it as a tragicomedy about despair, and it was restaged in 1889. . Initiative Productions’ The Real Ivanov, the original, 1887 play adapted and directed by Laura Strausfeld,…
Following its debut in 1996, and its ill-received New York premiere at Lincoln Center in 1997, An American Daughter, by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Wendy Wasserstein, has returned to the NYC stage. Presented by La Femme Theatre Productions – a company dedicated to plays written by and focused on women – this first…
More than four centuries after its first performance in 1611, The Winter’s Tale has lost none of its vigor or charm. Daniel Sullivan’s staging of Shakespeare’s tragicomedy makes the second offering of this season’s Free Shakespeare in the Park at the renovated Delacorte Theater a delight. With a star-studded cast led by Lily Rabe and…
Could you ever imagine a world without men, in which males have mysteriously died en masse and become extinct, the patriarchy is gone, and women are in charge? Playwright Melissa Maney does, in her feminist sci-fi absurdist dark comedy Hungry Women. The play is now in its world premiere engagement at SoHo Playhouse, following its…
Playwright Matthew Leavitt’s new play, Sukkot, recently presented at 59E59, dealt awkwardly with issues of death, life, grief, and joy. The plot in a nutshell: One year after losing his Jewish wife to breast cancer, non-Jew Patrick Sullivan (Andy Robinson) is still trying to overcome his deep grief, until a rabbi on a telephone zoom…
Love stories often ask whether time heals old wounds; Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, directed by Lynette Linton, asks the more provocative question of whether memory ever allows those wounds to close. Following its 2024 West End run in London, this emotionally resonant drama intertwines romance with the elusive nature of recollection, proving as intoxicating as it…
If AI could guide you through the most important decisions of your life, would you be happy and willing to listen? That’s the premise of the new play Disruption by Andrew Stein, now playing a limited Off-Broadway engagement at Pershing Square Signature Center. It’s a momentous question for our current times, with the ever-encroaching presence…
When The Whoopi Monologues opened in 1984 on Broadway, it showcasedWhoopi Goldberg’sacting and writing chops. In its revival at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater, five actresses take on the challenge — and deliver an ensemble performance that veers between funny, insightful and heartbreaking. The roles are endlessly varied. From a 20-something junkie to a teen…
What if Hamlet’s final performance really were his last? In The Last Hamlet, conceived and directed by multidisciplinary British artist Ben Duke, Duke and his company Lost Dog imaginatively turn Shakespeare’s most frequently performed tragedy inside out, creating a theatrically exhilarating fusion of drama and dance in which the Prince of Denmark fights for the…
Trauma exists; never doubt it. Dealing with trauma impels a lot of art, and many artists weave their lives, and their wounds, into their work. Sometimes, that makes super theater; sometimes, it feels like that time and care could have been better used. The time and care and thought and work and dedication that went…