All in Review
In Jessica Dickey’s new play “The Convent” a group of women participate in a retreat at a medieval convent in the South of France; the play boasts a promising and intriguing setup that is, unfortunately, bungled in execution due to underdeveloped characters and an imbalanced tone.
Iranian playwright and performer Nassim Soleimanpour’s latest play features a different guest actor at each performance, reading cold from a script fed by the author. This mysterious but sweet, slowly enveloping experience speaks to our shared humanity and breaks down the perceived barriers we erect between people, groups, and nations. Check it out.
“Bleach” is an immersive, site-specific solo show about a gay sex worker that is performed for an audience of ten or less in a drafty basement in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The experience is memorable, but the play itself is too safe for its own good.
The Broadway premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “Choir Boy” at Manhattan Theatre Club, finely acted and beautifully told, is transcendent. The very presence of this play on Broadway about a black, queer teenage boy navigating private, Christian Prep school life is seismic, and Jeremy Pope offers a memorable debut in this timely and important work.
Jeremy O. Harris’s scintillating debut play, “Slave Play” at New York Theatre Workshop, is not what you think it is, packing twists, some heavy satire, graphic sexuality, and an important discourse on race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary America. To write about it is to spoil its surprises, but this sold out run will no doubt inspire future productions.
Comedian Mike Birbiglia’s solo show “The New One” now on Broadway is a hilarious and heartwarming standup comedy act recounting one man’s skeptically reluctant journey to parenthood. Teeming with insight and wit, and performed by an instantly lovable schlub, this is an ideal show for, well, everyone.
For a fourth time, “The Illusionists” are back on Broadway, presenting a limited-run deluxe magic show featuring illusions, close-up magic, and mentalism performed by top practitioners in the field. If you’re a newbie to the form and are looking for an entertaining, well-produced, and mainstream magic show this holiday season, check it out.
“All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914” is a beautifully moving epistolary oratorio about the remarkable true story of British, French, and German soldiers emerging from their trenches and ceasing conflict on Christmas Eve 1914 to celebrate together. Gorgeously sung by an ensemble of ten men, and keenly structured and staged with gripping immediacy and emotion, this tribute to an unheralded moment in an increasingly forgotten war provides a glimpse of our common humanity at its greatest.
Ivo van Hove brings his signature style to an intense and intelligent stage production of Paddy Chayefsky’s prophetic 1976 film “Network”. An easy highlight of the Broadway season, Bryan Cranston gives a Tony Award-worthy performance as news anchor Howard Beale’s descent into a rage-filled demagogue. The message is the medium, and vice versa, in this technically brilliant and thrilling new drama.
In this comparative review, I take a look at the $35M “King Kong” musical on Broadway—complete with its thrilling stagecraft and lackluster material underneath—and the decidedly low-budget Off-Off-Broadway play, “The Making of King Kong”—a playful deconstruction of the “Kong” myth and its attendant problems of white patriarchy, colonialism, and sexism.
“The Cher Show”, a new bio-musical, never tries to be anything it is not, wholly owning its own wry silliness and decadent camp while honoring the pop legend whose story it quite legibly tells, and remaining blissfully entertaining. The show delivers exactly what it needs to—from songs to sequins—the costumes get entrance applause, and Stephanie J. Block embodies Cher in a career-high performance. Capturing the self-effacing spirit and pizzazz of its pop diva, “The Cher Show” is aptly titled.
Elaine May gives a searingly painful and simply heartbreaking performance as a woman descending into dementia in Kenneth Lonergan’s quietly sad play “The Waverly Gallery”. Marking the Broadway debuts of director Lila Neugebauer and actor Lucas Hedges, this naturalistic memory play is a stunning achievement in dramatizing the indignity of aging and the emotional impact of long-term care on a family unit. Perhaps Mr. Lonergan’s best play, Elaine May’s performance alone is worth the price of admission.
