Christiana Clark and the cast of Flex (Photo: Marc J. Franklin) Flex By Julia Polinsky In Candrice Jones’s marvelous Flex, on the stage at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse theater, it’s 1997. The WNBA has just become a reality. Five teenage girls in Plainnole, Arkansas, are drilling, passing, shooting baskets. Sharpen your senses;…
Arielle Jacobs and Jose Llana. (Photo: Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy, and Evan Zimmerman) Here Lies Love By Cammy Paglia The story of Imelda Marcos is taking Broadway by storm in the musical Here Lies Love. This show is a spectacle like none that has gone before. The concept, music and lyrics of…
Juliet Stevenson (Photo: Stephanie Berger) The Doctor By Deirdre Donovan Of all the productions that have arrived in New York this summer, The Doctor may well be the most memorable. Written and directed by Robert Icke, and starring the superb Juliet Stevenson, this play invites theatergoers to take a fresh and clear-eyed look at…
Marie Mullen (Photo: Carol Rosegg) The Saviour By Julia Polinsky Who saves whom? And from what? Mothers tend to say that there are some topics unsuitable for polite conversation. In The Saviour, Deirdre Kinahan’s marvelous play currently running at the Irish Repertory Theater, the formidable Maire hits on most of them, chiefly religion and sex….
Kelli O Hara and Brian d Arcy James (Photo Credit: Ahron R. Foster) Days of Wine and Roses By David Schultz This haunting chamber musical is perfectly suited for composer Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins, The Light in the Piazza). The complex contrapuntal stylistic music is Guettel s signature calling card. Sweet, simple melodic…
Ruthie Anne Miles (Photo: Joan Marcus) Light in the Piazza By Deirdre Donovan The new Encores! concert staging of the 2005 musical The Light in the Piazza breezed in and out of New York City Center in June, leaving audiences enchanted. Directed by Chay Yew, and starring the incomparable Ruthie Ann Miles as Margaret…
Caleb Eberhardt and Susannah Flood (Photo: Monique Carboni) The Comeuppance By Deirdre Donovan Some plays demand reflection; others ask that you place yourself in their frame-of-mind. With Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ provocative new play, The Comeuppance, you must do both. Directed by Eric Ting, this unsettling new drama invites theatergoers to take a close look at…
Constantine Maroulis (Photo by Joan Marcus) Rock and Roll Man By Cammy Paglia The excellent Off-Broadway musical Rock and Roll Man tells the devastating tale of legendary Alan Freed (impeccably played by Constantine Maroulis), the innovative DJ destroyed by J. Edgar Hoover (Bob Aria) in a corset and a woman’s wig….
Aisha Jackson, Morgan Whitley, Briga Heelan, Ashley Chiu, Gabrielle Beckford and Lauren Zakrin (Photo: Matthew Murphy) Once Upon A One More Time By Fern Siegel Betty Friedan is having a moment. And it’s on Broadway. Her book The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, bravely challenged patriarchal orthodoxies about women, which deemed marriage, children…
Sophia Anne Caruso, Alyssa Emily Marvin, Millicent Simmonds (Photo: MurphyMade, 2023) Grey House Hokum and Horror mix uneasily in this eerie play By David Schultz Playwright Levi Holloway has a lot to unpack in this dense, psychological horror-infused tale. As directed by Joe Mantello, the familiar supernatural tropes are laid out in the outset. The…