In her program notes for “You Got Older,” playwright Clare Barron shares her “optimistic belief that there is profound comfort in just living privately together. Life and desire can persist even if all we can muster up is the courage and time to sit together with something unspeakable between us.” It’s a beautiful articulation of what this 2014 play—now receiving…
Anna Ziegler’s “Antigone (This Play I Read in High School),” currently at the Public Theater’s Barbaralee Theater, is not the Sophocles tragedy I taught in high school—but then again, neither is James Ijames’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Fat Ham” the Hamlet Shakespeare wrote. The difference is that Ijames trusts his reimagining enough to tell his story without constantly stopping to explain it….
It has taken a very long time, actually 27 years, but Richard Maltby and David Shire have decided that it was “About Time,” their new musical revue, that completes the trilogy which began with “Starting Here, Starting Now” in 1976, followed by “Closer Than Ever” in 1989. It is about life in its third act, getting older and dealing with…
Abigail and Shaun Bengson welcome the audience to New York Theatre Workshop for “My Joy is Heavy.” They introduce themselves, the band, the crew. They explain this is a relaxed house performance—you can do whatever is good for your body and nervous system, there are access tables in the back, and if you have to get up and pee, they…
“Did You Write This Scene or Did I?” THE UNKNOWN at Studio Seaview When critics dismissed David Cale’s “The Unknown” as a solo thriller with a “tired twist,” they revealed more about their own jadedness than about the play’s achievement. At Studio Seaview, in a production directed by Leigh Silverman, Sean Hayes delivers a performance of such psychological precision and…
A Theatrical Rorschach Test: CHINESE REPUBLICANS at Roundabout Alex Lin’s “Chinese Republicans” arrives at Roundabout Theatre Company with considerable ambition: a world premiere examining Asian-American identity through the lens of corporate culture, intergenerational trauma, sexual harassment, immigration policy, economic justice, and political ideology. Director Chay Yew stages the action primarily at Golden Unicorn, a Chinatown dim sum restaurant where four…
“We’re Here. Right Now: THE RESERVOIR’s Hard-Won Grace” Jake Brasch’s “The Reservoir,” now playing at Atlantic Theater Company, operates through counterpoint: addiction and dementia, comedy and grief, the impulse to fix and the necessity of letting go. Josh (Noah Galvin), a 20-something alcoholic fresh from a Florida rehab disaster, returns to Denver convinced he can save his four aging grandparents…
Many plays are based on factual events that had a great impact on society during the time they took place and usually make the protagonist the person who was responsible for the course of action. Such is the case of “Marcel on the Train,” penned by Marshall Pailet and Ethan Slater, now playing at Classic Stage Company. The plot revolves…
Life can be compared to a fighting match, where once you step into the ring you are alone. You become a monster defending themselves and fighting for their life, suffering from cuts and bruises but still determined to stay alive and win, not for fortune and fame, but just to survive. The new play “Monsters,” penned and directed by Ngozi…
Most coming-of-age plays invite us to relate to individual characters as they navigate adolescent turmoil. We watch from outside, recognizing ourselves in their struggles. Else Went’s “Initiative,” receiving its world premiere at The Public Theater, does something far more ambitious and profound: it draws us inside the collective unconscious of seven teenagers coming to terms with trauma, sexuality, violence, and…