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…
After garnering mostly rave reviews in London’s West End and Stratford-upon-Avon, “Kyoto” by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson is currently running Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater. The play spans 1989-1997 and is narrated from the point of view of Don Pearlman (Stephen Kunken), an American oil lobbyist who works to sabotage UN climate negotiations. It’s framed as…
Isabelle Scutley is the main character in a new Broadway play that stars a riveting Jean Smart. She prefers to be called “Izzy” even though her husband Ferd disapproves. Fred is also psychologically and physically abusive, hindering Izzy’s artistic and academic endeavors. To avoid confrontation and harm she is often found in the bathroom, scribbling her poetry on sheets of…
Act One of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” currently running at the Palace Theatre takes place at a well-apportioned Chinese restaurant. Skillfully navigating Mamet’s iconic wordy text with rapid-fire delivery – in both monologues and dialogues – five realtors, their office manager, and a client with buyer’s remorse provide the exposition needed for the audience to parse Act Two. This…
Yet another new production enters the current Broadway season boasting a well-known film and television star, a large movie screen, and several television screens that surround the proscenium to provide close-ups of the actor. It is an adaptation for stage, from a movie bearing the same name. The well-known star is George Clooney, making his Broadway debut, and the show…
Two half-brothers half a world apart face the decline of their mother in Samuel D. Hunter’s “Grangeville” currently on at The Pershing Square Signature Center’s Alice Griffen Jewel Box Theatre. The mood of the conversations between forty-something Arnold (Brian J. Smith) who lives in Rotterdam and his older half-brother Jerry (Paul Sparks) who still lives in Grangeville, Idaho range from…
At the beginning of “Job” which is currently running at the Helen Hayes Theater, Jane (a frenetic yet oddly focused Sydney Lemmon) enters Lloyd’s (a seemingly focused yet not fully at ease Peter Friedman) office holding a gun, confident she knows “who he is.” Although she then briefly experiences some temporary doubt about her well-researched hypothesis, she is willing to…
There is an abundance of medical and anatomical references in “Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man & The Pool” currently running at Lincoln Center Theater’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. Mr. Birbiglia’s affinity for medicine is often part of or the central theme in his stand-up comedy gigs around the nation. His particular interest in his own health is also pivotal to his…
There is no doubt that “Camp Siegfried” a new play penned by Bess Wohl is extremely relevant given the current social, moral, and political landscape that has evolved in the past few years. The similarities might actually border on being frightening. The title and subject matter refer to a summer camp, one of many throughout the country, where German youth…
Elodie (Francesca Carpanini) and Otto (Uly Schlesinger) reunite in a bedroom after they meet in a town square in Chartres, France in August 1944. Crazy things happened in the square including Elodie having what seems an epileptic seizure. A woman laughed at Elodie, and Otto wanted to spit on her. Before Elodie arrives, she has visited the bombed out Gornall’s…