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Testament of Mary: Tibn's play gives Fiona Shaw endless opportunities for self-indulgence

The onstage installation which the audience is invited to come up and inspect before the performance of Colm Toibin's Testament of Mary (Walter Kerr Theatre) includes a live vulture, an object of fascination to me. My experience of vultures is limit...

by Michael Feingold on April 24, 2013
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Pippin: Ring Tone

A recent college grad finds himself back home, careerless and directionless. His rich father, interfering stepmother, and doting grandmother suggest various professions and pursuits, but he can't stick with anything for long. Left to his own devices...

by Alexis Soloski on April 24, 2013
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Taking Some Hacks with Charles McGill - Play them as they lie

A serious golfer, artist Charles McGill knows from bad lies. In 1997, he photographed himself playing through a vacant lot in Harlem, firing off elegant fades amid blowing trash, shattered bricks, and rusting rebar. A few years later, his job at the...

by R. C. Baker on April 17, 2013
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Claes Oldenburg's Soft Serve Escape From Late-term Abstract Expressionism at MOMA

Roaming through MOMA's chockablock installation of highlights from Claes Oldenburg's early career, you can sense a febrile mind and lightning-speed hands digging out from under the sludge of late-term Abstract Expressionism. It's 1960, and for inspi...

by R. C. Baker on April 17, 2013
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Nathan Lane Rules in The Nance - Playing a first-rate conflicted gay burlesque star

Douglas Carter Beane's The Nance (Lyceum Theatre) has got what it deserves from Lincoln Center Theater: a first-rate production, handsomely staged by Jack O'Brien, with a gigantically fine performance by Nathan Lane in the title role. Beane's play d...

by Michael Feingold on April 17, 2013
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Collapse: Bridge and Trouble - Pregnancy, PTSD, and potted plants in Women's Project play

The Women's Project tends to favor domestic comedies that play like tragedies. Or maybe it's the other way around. Recent shows such as Jackie, Bethany, Apple Cove, Lascivious Something, and Smudge show mothers and fathers, and husbands and wives, d...

by Alexis Soloski on April 17, 2013
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Orphans: Oh, Brothers - Lyle Kessler revival has Broadway all a-Twitter

Any Broadway show has much to live up to: burgeoning production costs; audience hopes inflated by high ticket prices; competition from film, television, and the dozens of other shows glutting Times Square. But Lyle Kessler's Orphans, now revived at ...

by Alexis Soloski on April 17, 2013
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Jekyll & Hyde: Weird Science - Frank Wildhorn's musical gets a revival on Broadway

The new Broadway revival of the musical Jekyll & Hyde feels more like an exhumation of sorts. Some may remember the first time it was here in the late '90s: Despite very little help from critics, it was nominated for four Tony Awards and was kept go...

by Angela Ashman on April 17, 2013
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Act of Will: Brustein Visits Shakespeare's Retirement Home

What did Shakespeare think about during his fallow final years? The playwright's retirement remains a mystery. We find it hard to imagine that one of humanity's greatest literary minds could be content with the fatted life of a gentleman farmer. But...

by Jacob Gallagher-Ross on April 17, 2013
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Motown and The Rascals: Jukebox Mausoleum - Boomers Turn Broadway into a Pop-Music Scrapbook

Here's a test you can take to help determine whether shelling out $150-plus for the Motown musical is for you. Head on over to YouTube, and find the Jackson Five singing "Who's Loving You" on The Ed Sullivan Show. As he patters before the song kicks...

by Alan Scherstuhl on April 17, 2013
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La Ruta: Rough Crossing - Working Theater Explores Immigrants' Plight

This spring, Congress is yet again taking up the debate over immigration reform. And for every day politicians spend arguing over the fate of workers already in the U.S., one or two immigrants--and sometimes more--will die just trying to get here. ...

by Miriam Felton-Dansky on April 17, 2013
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Mayday Mayday: Lucky Break? - Tristan Sturrock's solo sends chills up the spine

If you were to wander backstage, into green rooms and dressing rooms and the dark spaces of the wings, you might hear performers whispering a cheery, "Break a leg!" They don't mean it. No actor, save a very disgruntled understudy, really wishes disa...

by Alexis Soloski on April 17, 2013
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The Dance of Death: Domestic Violence - In Red Bull revival, a couple vow to love, honor, and destroy

Edgar and Alice are soon to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. What would constitute an appropriate gift? Arsenic? Cyanide? A neatly sharpened saber? Never has marriage seemed more devilishly injurious than in August Strindberg's 1900 The D...

by Alexis Soloski on April 17, 2013
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Macbeth: Psyched Out - Alan Cumming Brings Solo Sound and Fury to Broadway

Macbeth is one of the loneliest characters Shakespeare ever wrote. He sacrifices everything to his ravenous ambition--sleep, friendship, loyalty, conscience; even, eventually, his loving if twisted marriage--leaving him to enjoy his hard-won ascent ...

by Jacob Gallagher-Ross on April 17, 2013
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Dropped Call - Tanya Barfield's new play about biracial adoption loses reception with distracting tactics

Adoption, a touchy subject in all instances, is the ostensible topic of The Call (Playwrights Horizons), a small, tautly written, tidy--perhaps over-tidy-new play by the gifted Tanya Barfield. And like some adopted children, The Call turns out to be...

by Michael Feingold on April 17, 2013
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Gordon Matta-Clark Spelunked the Soul of the City - Deep cuts

There is something both elegiac and death-defying about Gordon Matta-Clark's work. The short-lived Matta-Clark (1943-1978) is most famous for cutting huge sections out of decrepit buildings, graceful forms achieved through the brute application o...

by R. C. Baker on April 10, 2013
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Kinky Boots Kicks Up Some Familiar High Heels; Buyer and Cellar Prowls Barbra's Mall - Shop talk

I'd probably be able to discuss Kinky Boots (Hirschfeld Theatre) much more lucidly if I could only figure out in what decade it's meant to take place. The characters use cellphones, but apparently few of them have ever seen a man wearing women's clo...

by Michael Feingold on April 10, 2013
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Goldor $ Mythyka: A Hero Is Born: Let It Role - Young gamers rack up experience and felonies in New Georges drama

In 2007, a young Ohio couple with a penchant for role-playing games robbed nearly $8 million from an armored car company and were promptly arrested. Some hailed them as heroes, some as idiots. But only playwright Lynn Rosen recognized them as inspir...

by Alexis Soloski on April 10, 2013
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Kafka's Monkey: Great Ape - Telling us what's wrong with humanity

For us--the esteemed members of the Academy seated in the auditorium--the evening's guest lecturer is a small hunched man (Kathryn Hunter) who will recount his former life as an ape. Five years ago, he swung from trees and chomped on bananas. Today,...

by Tom Sellar on April 10, 2013
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Eterniday: Fantasy Island - Witness Relocation's show looks at love in all the best places

Missed out on spring break? Ready to spend a few sun-drenched afternoons on an island drinking Chteauneuf-du-Pape and eating tarte tatin while waiting for romance? Then Eterniday, Witness Relocation's new dance-theater piece (now running at La MaMa...

by Tom Sellar on April 10, 2013