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…
One would think mounting a Broadway show about snooker would be perilous. Richard Bean’s “The Nap,” currently running at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, unfortunately confirms that fear. Think “The Hustler” staged as a farce with poorly developed characters whose conflicts are not believable and drive a less than satisfying plot. Dylan Spokes (an energetic and engaging Ben…
There are many victims in the new family drama penned by Lily Thorne, but perhaps the audience is the most unfortunate casualty, having to suffer through this slow, protracted, insipid production for over two-and-a-half hours and wishing that “Peace for Mary Frances” would have come much sooner. The structure of the play is problematic: the series of short scenes ranging…
“Sweat,” currently running on Broadway at Studio 54, seems to be a play about not what it is assumed to be about. It is not about post-election politics. It is not about the history of factory closings in America’s rust belt or the pandemic of brokenness in American cities. “Sweat” is about human brokenness, the kind of brokenness that results…