Reviews Archives

  • The Home Place

    Rachel Pickup        phtos Carol Rosegg                                                                        By Ron Cohen Years of Irish-English strife are compacted into one day in Brian Friel’s drama, The Home Place, and the Irish playwright’s sympathies extend to both sides of the fray. It makes for an absorbing if somewhat tempered look into the destructive nature of colonization and political repression,…

  • Squeamish

    by Edward Medina Sharon is a basket case. She’s a New York City, Upper West Side psychoanalyst in need of her own New York City, Upper West Side psychiatrist. She’s off her meds. Has been for a while. She’s a recovering alcoholic. Desperately in need of a drink. Sharon’s barely keeping it together but she’s…

  • Annie Get Your Gun

    Devon Perry as Annie Oakley         Photos by John Vecchiolla                                      By Ed Lieberman Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show has settled in Elmsford for Westchester Broadway Theatre’s year-end production, Annie Get Your Gun. Familiar real life characters, including Frank Butler, Buffalo Bill Cody, Pawnee Bill, Sitting Bull and the title character, Annie Oakley, inhabit the stage…

  • The Honeymooners

                                                                      Photo by Evan Zimmerman                                   By David Schultz The past year has proven to be extremely stressful with the new political regime in place. Every new day posits a new twilight zone mentality to disturb and unnerve the soul. What better time then to go back…. way back to the 1950’s…

  • Lonely Planet

    Matt McGrath and  Arnie Burton                      Photo credit Carol Rosegg                                             By Ron Cohen In the category of plays dealing with the AIDS epidemic, Lonely Planet is notable for its rather blithe, fanciful ambience. The play, which was first produced in 1991 at the Northlight Theatre in Evanston, Illinois, and saw an Off-Broadway premiere in 1994,…

  • The Treasurer

    Deanna Dunagan & Peter Friedman                               photos  by Joan Marcus                                                By Eugene Paul Startlingly  accomplished new playwright Max Posner is having his  long gestated, lovingly autobiographical first major play being hijacked by the brilliant performance of Deanna Dunagan as his captivating grandmother sliding into dementia.That he as well as we lose sight of the…

  • Rhinoceros

    ALEC LEYZER BURKO, GERA SANDLER   Photos: Pedro Hernandez                       By Eugene Paul The New Yiddish Rep returns after  Moshe Yassur’s distinguished production in Yiddish there of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman with his earnest, underfed  staging of Eugene Ionesco’s indigestible Rhinoceros, whose Yiddish  translation – there are the necessary crutch of titles –…

  • Mary Jane

    Liza Colón-Zayas and Carrie Coon                              photos by Joan Marcus                           By Ron Cohen Be prepared to have your emotions shredded. Amy Herzog’s Mary Jane quietly pulls you into the life of its title character, a single mother caring for her chronically ill child, and never lets you go. And Herzog does this without any…

  • As You Like It

                                                 By Ron Cohen The story’s a little muddy, but director John Doyle and company still fill this trip to Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden with lots of happy sightseeing. Oscar- and Tony-winner Ellen Burstyn sits quietly on stage, atop a wardrobe trunk, a big book on her lap – presumably the collected works of…

  • In & Of Itself

                                            Photo credit Edward Medina                              by Edward Medina Some believe that “the oldest profession” is an idiom that conjures up mental images of brothels and clandestine encounters. Others believe that the expression goes back further in time. It harkens back to the time when we as hominids gathered around the fire and told stories…