The revival of “Take Me Out” by Richard Greenberg which opened at The Helen Hayes Theater, in many ways does not feel as if it were written twenty years ago, given the current political climate and the conservative challenges of LGBTQ+ rights. The story about a major league baseball star surprisingly coming out in a public arena, deals with the…
The Comedian Harmonists was an internationally famous all-male German singing group that was formed during the Weimar period and was forced to disband in the early 1930’s when the Nazi regime came into power. The group consisted of six males, three of whom were Jewish or of Jewish decent and one that had married a Jewish woman. The story of…
Plays parsing the viability of monogamy are nothing new. The “sacred” tie that binds “one man and one woman” have been under scrutiny since the mythic Adam and Eve stumbled out of the garden shortly after their creation and subsequent fall from grace. The current hype about the sanctity of heteronormative coupling makes the issue even more relevant despite the…
“The Great Society,” the second installment of playwright Robert Schenkkan’s biographical account of the years Lyndon B. Johnson spent as president in the White House, is less a drama and more a chronological list of the destructive events the plagued his second term in office. To the playwright’s credit, it is extensively detailed and factual; however, to his discredit, it…
Emily Penrose (a guarded and steely Cherry Jones), Editor-in Chief of a high-end publication, hopes to score big on the publication of a “lyrical essay” written by longtime associate John D’Agata (a languid and tenderly resilient Bobby Cannavale). She has shut down the presses and pulled the story about “Congressional Spouses” to publish the essay about the suicide of a…