Top New York Theater News
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A box of ice cream sandwiches suffers a vicious assault in Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Happy, produced by MCC. As does a vending machine, a... More >>
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At 75, many a man might reasonably think of retirement. Instead, John Guare has embarked on a fresh career. In 3 Kinds of Exile, the portmanteau... More >>
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The playwright Jenny Schwartz savors words the way a more indolent person might gorge on bonbons—delighting in language's sound, shape, and... More >>
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When Rod McLachlan's smart, passionate play Good Television begins in the offices of Rehabilitation, a cable show that bears a strong resemblance... More >>
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In Erica Lipez's The Tutors—now playing at Second Stage Uptown, directed by Thomas Kail—a trio of earnest young pedagogues gets... More >>
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Would you let gas companies drill beneath your yard, if it meant a payout so huge you'd never have to work again? Your answer might surprise... More >>
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Don't bother bringing tissues to Far From Heaven, the chilly musical adaptation of Todd Haynes's 2002 film. Haynes updated a classic Douglas Sirk... More >>
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Howling at God—and playwrightsAs Mando Alvarado’s The Basilica (from the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater) grinds on past one tragic, hard-to-accept plot development, and... More >>
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A team-building workshop goes awryFive middle-aged men and one woman trapped in a room together is never a bad place to start. Set in a drab hotel conference space, Rhea... More >>
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Theaters are haunted places. Specters are said to lurk in dressing rooms, phantoms in the fly space. Even the most unsuperstitious houses leave... More >>
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Golden girlsFrom a certain vantage point, it's hard not to suspect that stage veterans Lois Smith and Frances Sternhagen have been living parallel... More >>
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The plays are the thingIt was the worst of years; it was the best of years. I've never felt as much frustration and agony while theatergoing as I did during... More >>
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A few years ago, a playwright, a director, and seven actors sheltered together in a disused bank vault far below Wall Street. Huddled behind a... More >>
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Former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne on Imelda Marcos and the bubble of powerWhen David Byrne dances he seems both absorbed in the movement of his body and detached from it, torso and legs vibrating rhythmically, face... More >>
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Audiences love obsessives. Set a character with a crazy, unquenchable hunger center stage and they eat it up, whether the character's hunger is... More >>
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Play Company sinks its teeth into fusion dramaDid you order a side of magical realism with your moo goo gai pan? Is that a dash of absurdism in your tom yum? In Roland Schimmelpfennig’s... More >>
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Is Off-Broadway a galaxy far, far away? Stars effervesced Monday night, when theatrical luminaries and icons of TV and film thronged the East... More >>
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Samuel (Rocco Sisto), the central figure of Richard Foreman's new work, Old-Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance) (Public Theater), has a... More >>
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Mike Bartlett turns downsizing into a blood sportMike Bartlett's vicious Bull, a nasty one-act dissection of office politics mapped onto a bullfight, represents a companion to his earlier Cock... More >>
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Richard Nelson's Cold War dish, served chilledWhat if composer Nikolai "Nicky" Nabokov, choreographer George Balanchine, composer Igor Stravinsky, designer Sergey Sudeikin, and a host of... More >>
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Steven Levenson offers a team-building exerciseIn the office lexicon, are there words more demoralizing than "corporate retreat"? Not for employees of Skyline Travel, the decaying agency at... More >>
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The sunshine. The palm trees. The dashing leading men. The lissome starlets. The spangles. The elephants? As you may have guessed, Ayub Khan... More >>
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Staging Local DemocracyEver fancy yourself a politician? Perhaps a much-beloved mayor, or a city councilor staunchly shepherding your hometown along? If so, seize the... More >>
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The Bushwick Starr Checks into a Roman HostelWhen you go home after living abroad, you inevitably leave part of yourself behind. If you were living in a different language, there are zesty... More >>
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Here's one of the toughest of all form vs. content dilemmas: How do you craft narrative art out of the slog of unhappy family life, making... More >>
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Where there's a will...Three obstinate females—one fictional and two historical—dominated my theatergoing last week. Tenacious women make great showy roles... More >>
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Exploring the pain of Alzheimer’sA new musical about Alzheimer’s disease? If you harbor suspicions that the musical, an all-American dramatic form, skews toward... More >>
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Nick Vaughn and Jake Margolin engulf HERE with marriage equalityNick Vaughn and Jake Margolin’s A Marriage has modest ambitions. The two conceptual/performance artists, married in 2008, want viewers to... More >>
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Losing their religionThe title of Richard Greenberg's new play, The Assembled Parties (Friedman Theatre), carries multiple meanings. Its "parties" are a pair of... More >>
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The onstage installation which the audience is invited to come up and inspect before the performance of Colm Toibin’s Testament of Mary... More >>
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A recent college grad finds himself back home, careerless and directionless. His rich father, interfering stepmother, and doting grandmother... More >>
From the Print Edition
Laurel Nakadate: Strangers and Relations
For a young artist whose past works include videos of herself dancing in her underwear with middle-aged men who have picked her up in parking lots, Laurel Nakadate's current exhibition,… More >>
Reasons to Be Happy, in which Neil LaBute May Hate Inanimate Objects
A box of ice cream sandwiches suffers a vicious assault in Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Happy, produced by MCC. As does a vending machine, a sports trophy, a microwave,… More >>
Are you sitting comfortably? Then you are not attending Cora Bissett's Roadkill, a site-specific screed against human trafficking produced by St. Ann's Warehouse, in which attendees share a minibus bound… More >>
Composer-lyricist Matt Sax loves hip-hop. He also loves Shakespeare. These enthusiasms unite—not always smoothly—in Venice, a rap and pop musical loosely tied to the tragedy of Othello, but more concerned… More >>
Forget potty-training, teenage drama, and the SATs: as any discerning New York parent knows, the trickiest part of child-rearing is getting your offspring into the elite kindergarten of your choice.… More >>
Le Corbusier's Paper Utopias
"You must be sympathetic to man's condition in his environment," the modernist architect Le Corbusier said in a 1957 film. "That's what interests me, and I've found in painting a… More >>
John Guare Looks to the East in 3 Kinds of Exile
At 75, many a man might reasonably think of retirement. Instead, John Guare has embarked on a fresh career. In 3 Kinds of Exile, the portmanteau play at Atlantic Theater,… More >>
Lively Speech Buoys Somewhere Fun
The playwright Jenny Schwartz savors words the way a more indolent person might gorge on bonbons—delighting in language's sound, shape, and scrumptious connotations. In Somewhere Fun, the dreamlike three-act play… More >>
Good Television: Battling to Maintain Integrity on Reality TV
When Rod McLachlan's smart, passionate play Good Television begins in the offices of Rehabilitation, a cable show that bears a strong resemblance to A&E's Intervention, you may draw a breath,… More >>
The Tutors School Some Tough (and Trite) Lessons
In Erica Lipez's The Tutors—now playing at Second Stage Uptown, directed by Thomas Kail—a trio of earnest young pedagogues gets schooled in some tough (and somewhat trite) life lessons. Former… More >>
