All in Review
Tony Kushner’s 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece “Angels in America” is back on Broadway in a transcendent and timely production sleekly staged by Marianne Elliot and featuring a superb ensemble cast; one of the greatest plays ever written and certainly the most important of the past 25 years, get tickets now or live to regret it.
Edward Albee’s 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece “Three Tall Women” is ferociously compelling under the smart hand of director Joe Mantello, and features a trio of astonishing performances by Glenda Jackson, Laurie Metcalf, and Alison Pill. This limited engagement of a towering work by a towering playwright and featuring three towering performances is not to be missed.
“Lobby Hero” is a funny, simple, and engaging play that follows the morally fraught actions of a quartet of uniformed personalities: two security guards and two police officers. Despite an anti-climactic ending, Michael Cera and Chris Evans give excellent performances and the play, touching on issues like workplace sexual harassment and racial bias in criminal justice, is eminently entertaining.
“The Winter’s Tale”, one of Shakespeare’s notorious “problem plays”, is given a solid new production by Arin Arbus with a terrific troupe of actors. While not a canonical favorite of mine, this play offers fascinating insights, is well-designed and performed, and is sure to delight any lover of Shakespeare.
“Grand Hotel, The Musical” is a glorious gem from 1989, now presented in a full out, Broadway-quality production with a roster of superb performances that weave an evocative, sumptuous, and highly entertaining visit to 1928 Berlin. This is arguably the best production Encores! has presented since “Chicago” in 1996, and deserves a Broadway transfer. See it now so you can say you saw it when!
“Frozen”, the new musical based on Disney’s 2013 box office bonanza animated film, is a disappointing, self-conscious, and abundantly safe two-dimensional stage version of a two-dimensional cartoon, lacking grand gestures of sweeping inspiration or genuine smiles of magic, instead feeling mostly rote and composed by committee. You’re better off letting this one go.
Billy Crudup is simply captivating and astonishing as he seamlessly summons 15 characters in David Cale’s one-person thriller “Harry Clarke”. At once funny, sexy, and scary, the elements of this crisp production exist in exquisite harmony, balanced and honed by the production team to achieve a memorable and chilling evening at the theatre. You do not want to miss Mr. Crudup’s performance in this superb play.
“Escape to Margaritaville” is a reverse-engineered juke box musical fashioning the catalogue of beach bum rocker Jimmy Buffett into an abundantly sunny but soulless celebration of mindless inebriation and middling intellect where more fun is had on stage than in the audience. Opt out of this branding venture, and follow the Parrotheads to a Jimmy Buffett concert instead.
Two new plays that opened Off-Broadway recently document finer points of the immigrant experience—in the United Kingdom and the United States. "An Ordinary Muslim" and "queens" are long-winded but well-acted, and offer important, thought-provoking, and memorable perspectives that buck common perception, making for rewarding theatre.
“Admissions” is a provocative new play by Joshua Harmon that pierces the veil of “white liberalism” to reveal simmering interpersonal issues that contradict beliefs in institutional ideals. Smartly staged and exquisitely acted, this play poses uncomfortable but important questions about race, identity, and privilege as our country navigates an increasingly divisive and siloed discourse.
After a 15 year wait, “Jerry Springer—The Opera” has finally arrived in New York in a spectacular and profane production with an excellent cast headed by Terence Mann; unfortunately, the shock value is low and the vulgarity gratuitous, and mostly humorless. The show’s value lies in its role as mirror to our society, but that point remains too understated and insufficiently explored to make a lasting impact.
Jeff Hiller is hilarious and captivating as a disgruntled gay guest at a same sex wedding in Drew Droege’s one man show, “Bright Colors and Bold Patterns”. If you like to laugh, this is one show you will not want to miss.
