Reviews Archives

  • Present Laughter

    Joan Marcus                                                Cobie Smulders and Kevin Kline                                                                  By Ron Cohen Everybody loves Garry Essendine. Ladies say they have lost their “latch keys” as a pretense to spend the night in his posh apartment. His longtime secretary, Monica, and even his estranged wife, Liz, watch over him like a pair of guardian angels. A…

  • City Center Encores! The New Yorkers

    Tam Mutu and Scarlett Strallen                                                       Photos credit Joan Marcus                                               by Deirdre Donovan Since 1991, City Center Encores! has been one of the darlings of the New York Theater establishment. With its latest offering, Cole Porter’s The New Yorkers under the sound direction of John Rando, it can only endear itself more to musical…

  • Sweat

    Johanna Day as Tracey and Michelle Wilson as Cynthia photos by Joan Marcus.                               By Marc Miller If, like 65 million other Americans, you woke up last November 9 bewildered, aghast, and wondering how, how could this have happened, you are urged to make your way to Studio 54, where Lynn Nottage’s Sweat provides some…

  • How to Transcend a Happy Marriage

    Omar Metwally as Paul, Marisa Tomei as George, Lena Hall as Pip, Austin Smith as David and David McElwee as Freddie                                                                          photos by Kyle Froman                         By Marc Miller A succinct verdict on How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, was offered up by a much-loved theater critic: “Well, it’s my favorite Sarah Ruhl play so…

  • Church & State

    Rob Nagle              photos by Russ Rowland                                                By Marc Miller There’s not much church, but plenty of state, in Church & State, Jason Odell Williams’s “serious comedy” now populating New World Stages. “State” as in the state of North Carolina, the current state of American politics, and an attempted statement on what to do about…

  • The Price

                         by Deirdre Donovan Arthur Miller’s popularity certainly isn’t waning on Broadway. Just last season A View from the Bridge and The Crucible, both memorably directed by the Belgian director Ivo van Hove, were hot tickets on the Great White Way.  Now, The Price returns to Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre under Terry Kinney’s…

  • Chess Match No. 5

    Ellen Lauren, Will Bond                                                                                                 Photos by Maria Baranova                                            By Eugene Paul   Playcrafter Jocelyn Clarke, heeding director Anne Bogart’s long held desire to craft the extraordinary John Cage’s actual expressed  revelations and conclusions regarding time, space, hearing, seeing, sllence, sound has done his darnedest so successfully you actually think Will Bond, as HE…

  • The Glass Menagerie

     Madison Ferris, Sally Field, and Joe Mantello                                                                             (PHOTOs: JULIETA CERVANTES)                 by Deirdre Donovan     The Glass Menagerie is Tennessee Williams’ gentlest play.  But with Sam Gold at the helm, it gets quality of a Midwest prairie stretching into an unknown horizon. Whether you like it or not will depend much on your…

  • Come From Away

                                  By Eugene Paul The healthiest, most American, brightest, most uplifting, most joyous, most American, most captivating, most inspiring, most American, goodest show in town thrilling audiences to their shouting beings, isn’t American, it’s Canadian.  Isn’t that a kick in the heart… And coming at a time when our political capital is so sore,…

  • Wakey, Wakey

    Joan Marcus                        Michael Emerson in ‘Wakey, Wakey’                                                    By David Schultz The music of Maurice Ravel floats in your ears as you await the play to begin. The gradually escalating strains of Bolero reach their well-earned crashing crescendo, and then the lights shine brightly on a man facedown on the floor…as he gasps aloud “Is…