Jackie Sibblies Drury's "Fairview" wins the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Laurie Metcalf, Eddie Izzard, Russell Tovey, and Patsy Ferran to star in 2020 Broadway revival of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"; "Oklahoma!" musical television series in development; 2019-2020 seasons announced at Off-Broadway's Signature Theatre and Playwright's Horizons; "Grease" movie prequel is in the works; Mike Faist will play Riff in “West Side Story" film; Olga Merediz, Gregory Diaz IV, Jimmy Smits join "In the Heights" film; Lila Neugebauer to make film debut; RIP Georgia Engel
All tagged Lila Neugebauer
REVIEW: Elaine May devastates in “The Waverly Gallery”
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.
REVIEW: “Mary Page Marlowe”
Tracy Letts’ “Mary Page Marlowe” at Second Stage offers a fascinating, fragmented portrait of one ordinary woman’s journey through life, embodied by six actors in eleven time-hopping scenes. The tension of what happens to us versus what we control haunts the text as Mary Page traverses decades, surfing waves of feminism amidst the shifting roles of women from mid-century America to the present. Mr. Letts, director Lila Neugebauer, and an ensemble cast of 18 create a mosaic that is compelling, if ultimately mysterious.
REVIEW: “Peace for Mary Frances”
“Peace for Mary Frances”, a new play by Lily Thorne, receives a world premiere production by The New Group starring Lois Smith as a fading matriarch of a very dysfunctional family, waiting to die in home hospice. Hyper-realistic, brimming with both tedium and spasmodic explosions of family feuds, death isn’t always the most compelling experience to observe, but that turns out to be the point.
REVIEWS: "The Amateurs", "At Home at the Zoo", and "Relevance"
A roundup look at three plays that opened recently Off-Broadway. I highly recommend the Vineyard Theatre's striking "The Amateurs" and Signature Theatre's superb "At Home at the Zoo", but suggest skipping MCC Theater's "Relevance".
REVIEW: A grim, subterranean future in “After the Blast”
“After the Blast” by Zoe Kazan at Lincoln Center's Claire Tow Theatre provides a well-acted story that imagines a grim, post-apocalyptic future underground where our characters grapple with depression and search for life’s meaning and purpose. Oh, and there’s a robot in the cast.