Reviews Archives

  • Magmanus

                                                                   By R. Pikser   They opened my eyes. They stopped my breath.  They expanded my heart.  I am more alive because I sat for 65 minutes and drank them in.   Magmanus, the name of the Swedish circus company duo performing Attached, is a witty, intertwined combination of the first names of the…

  • The Awful Truth

    Alexandra O’Daly and Nate Washburn Photo: © Jacob J. Goldberg Photography                                             By Marc Miller The Metropolitan Playhouse is calling its 24th season the Season of Hope, and it’s off to a modestly hopeful start. Arthur Richman’s The Awful Truth, which showcased the great sophisticated comedienne Ina Claire for 144 performances in 1922, is best…

  • Danny and the Deep Blue Sea

                                                           by Julia Polinsky Like a rough draft for a “good parts” version of Moonstruck, John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea tells us that True Love is possible, even for the less than perfect people among us. Well, in this production at Theater for the New City, maybe yes, maybe no….

  • The Christians

    Emily Donohue, Linda Powell and Andrew Garman             photos by Joan Marcus                             by Michall Jeffers What a joy it is to experience a play that forces us to think about what we really believe. I challenge any intelligent theater-goes to see The Christians, and then not want to discuss it at length. Is there a…

  • The New Morality

                                                by Marc Miller The thing about The New Morality is, the morality’s so old. Remember when heroines used to spend three acts suspecting their husbands of infidelity, and if it were true, it would truly be the end of the world? No, you probably don’t, and to encounter Harold Chapin’s upper-class Brit twits taking…

  • Pondling

    Genevieve Hulme-Beaman                                          Photos by Paul McCarthy                                       by Eugene Paul An extremely rare theatrical happenstance is taking place at 59E59 Theaters: a star is aborning. A blazing star.  If you pull yourself together and hasten, you may be one of the fortunate beings to witness, to experience this once in a lifetime zing.  She’s exploding…

  • Mercury Fur

    Jack DiFalco, Zane Pais                                    photo credit Monique Carboni                        By David Schultz Reprehensible, creepy, intriguing, extremely poorly acted, unintelligible at times, oddly paced, and stomach churning.  This newly revised play written by Philip Ridley does have some interesting ideas buried deep within its bowels. But the sheer unpleasantness of sitting through this miasma of pointlessness…

  • Little Thing Big Thing

    Sorcha Fox and Donal O’Kelly                      Photos by Pat Redmond                           by Eugene Paul Well, now, Irish charm, famous in song and story, does it again in the persons Donal O’Kelly and Sorcha Fox, two of the most endearing, beguiling, twist-round-your-little-finger Irish performers you’d ever have the pleasure to meet and if it wasn’t for the…

  • Love & Money

    ©Joan Marcus From left: Joe Paulik, Gabriel Brown and Maureen Anderman in ‘Love & Money’                                             by Eugene Paul There’s a slight chance that A.R. Gurney, playwright purveyor of things WASPy, is writing a parody of his own work on the world he’s made his own in so many of his plays, but don’t hold…

  • Backwards in High Heels

    Darien Crago (Ginger Rogers) and Jeremy Benton (Fred Astaire). Photos by John Vecchiolla                             by Eugene Paul If you were ungallant enough to compare the star original, Ginger Rogers, to her enactor, Darien Crago, star of the current bio-musical Backwards in High Heels, you’d end up with our silver screen favorite winning big in the…