“The Gin Game,” experiencing its third run on Broadway, was Donald L. Colburn’s first play premiering in 1976. The well-received play managed to garner him The Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1978 after the successful run on The Great White Way starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. What became evident from that original production was that in order for this…
After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, 127,000 Japanese-Americans were forced to abandon their homes and businesses and – throughout World War II – relocate to ten concentration camps scattered across the interior of the United States. This remains one of the most flagrant violations of civil liberties in American history – all initiated by President Franklin…
Manhattan Theatre Club rolls out a kinder, gentle, more cerebral “Fool for Love” at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre with bruises more internal and spiritual than external and physical. Self-discovery on a dualistic battlefield is, after all, more cerebral though the wounds no less severe and long-lasting. True seekers often wrestle with demons in the desert and it is in…
Whether the audience member chooses to appreciate “It Shoulda Been You” as a delightful old fashioned musical with a solid score, a serviceable book, and an outstanding cast or chooses to explore the musical’s rich layers of plot, either way, the opportunity to experience David Hyde Pierce’s exemplary and creative staging of the new musical at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre…
“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.” Sigmund Freud, from “New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,” 1932 There are soliloquies. There are asides. These are two dramatic conventions that allow the audience to know what an actor is thinking and feeling without the other actors on stage knowing….
“That isn’t me. (at J. M. Barrie) That’s him. He’s Peter Pan. (Barrie – perhaps only realizing this for the first time, too) He just has my name. And it’s the best present any boy was ever given, anywhere in the world.” (Peter Llewelyn Davies in “Finding Neverland”) For those who have never grown up and still indulge in imaginative…
“Side Show’s” messages of self-acceptance, unconditional and non-judgmental love, and commitment bring audiences to their feet at the close of the re-imagined musical currently playing at the St. James Theatre and surprisingly scheduled to close on Sunday January 4, 2015. The musical opened to exceptionally positive reviews in November and nightly has elicited (rarely experienced from Broadway audiences) acclamations from…
[Sting has assumed the role of Jackie White played by Jimmy Nail for the December 7 performance attended by Theatre Reviews Limited. Mr. Nail will continue in the role at the conclusion of Sting’s run on January 24, 2015.] Everything is just right about “The Last Ship” currently running at the Neil Simon Theatre. With music and lyrics by Sting…
(A second review of “A Delicate Balance” by David Roberts will be posted next week.) There might come a day when Edward Albee is treated like Shakespeare. A familiar foreign language with rhythmic underpinnings, Albee’s angst over the unattainability of human connection could be tantamount to The Bard’s dread of the Great Chain of Being. Artists and academics of the…
By now you’ve discovered the horrible truth, that A.R. Gurney’s ‘Love Letters’ is essentially a staged reading with a $127 price tag, but veteran director Gregory Mosher couldn’t have made a more fitting decision. The play follows the written correspondence of Andrew Ladd and Melissa Gardner, two upper-crust kids growing up, starting careers, creating families, and eventually fading into old…