Kenny Leon, director of the current streamlined revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, brings a fresh new interpretation to the classic. He takes the revered play and makes it into a multicultural theatrical statement that invites everybody to enjoy this hauntingly sublime work. Our Town is an outlier in American…
For fans of Billy Wilder’s masterpiece Sunset Boulevard, the Broadway incarnation may be jolting. It’s not Wilder’s vision, but director Jamie Lloyd’s Sunset Blvd., reimagined for the stage. While the piece is based on the 1950 movie — and retains some of its powerful lines — this version is oddly devoid of place. Now at…
Adam Driver (Photo: Julieta Cervantes) Hold On To Me Darling Playwright Kenneth Lonergan’s revival of his 2016 play has much to offer in its new incarnation. Once again directed by Neil Pepe, the finely tuned cast brings out the humor and pathos in fits and starts. The running time of almost three hours gives…
Jenny Lee Stern, Chris Collins-Pisano (Photo: Carol Rosegg) Forbidden Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song By Deirdre Donovan The latest version of Forbidden Broadway is settling in just fine at Theater 555. Created, written, and directed by Gerard Alessandrini, this revue, entitled Forbidden Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song, is 90-minutes of sheer theatrical fun….
Susannah Flood, Anthony Edwards (Photo: Joan Marcus) The Counter by Lydia Sue Keidel Meghan Kennedy’s The Counter, now at the Laura Pels theater, tells the story of an unlikely friendship unfolding at a diner in a small town in upstate New York where time appears to have stood still. The Counter starts slowly, establishing the…
Julia Brothers, Lukey Klein, Richard Brothers, Joy Avigail Sudduth (Photo: Maria Baranova) Sump’n Like Wings By Marc Miller Lynn Riggs, if he’s remembered at all today, is remembered as the author of Green Grow the Lilacs, a minor Theater Guild flop of 1931 that achieved unexpected immortality a dozen years later, when Rodgers and Hammerstein…
The Hills of California, to begin with, isn’t about California, or even hills. The title of Jez Butterworth’s great big Broadway play refers to some mid-20th century Johnny Mercer pop ballad, not a famous one, that receives several renditions here, along with Rodgers and Hart and other American songbook standards. At once a searing look…
The Ensemble of The Big Gay Jamboree (Photo: Matthew Murphy) The Big Gay Jamboree By Fern Siegel Those who grew up on classic musicals will appreciate their send-up in The Big Gay Jamboree, now off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theater. Marla Mindelle, the show’s star and co-creator, gives an LGBTQ+ sensibility to the traditional musical, which…
Part backstage comedy, part political satire, part based in fact and part pure fiction, David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face is by turns hilarious, touching, and disturbing. It’s been suggested that we might appreciate the gift to see ourselves as other see us. But we might not. Yellow Face pokes hard at identity politics, as it…
It’s beyond unusual to start a show with the stars taking a bow. But Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone wield such theatrical clout that, as they walk onstage in The Roommate at the Booth Theatre, winding through designer Bob Crowley’s suggestive, minimalist stage, they get a round of applause, then walk off. And then the…