Theater: News, Information and Reviews
Jordan Roth, the 36-year-old head of Jujamcyn Theaters, was working the phones like an old pro yesterday in an effort to salvage “Clybourne Park,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that, after being torpedoed this week by Scott Rudin, was listing like the Costa Concordia. And it looks like his efforts are...
Sat, 4 Feb 2012 00:36:22 -0500
John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” opened in London with a huge bang in 1956, upending staid British theater and helping usher the era of “angry young men” — smart, educated, working- or middle-class, and riled up by their lack of access in post-WWII society. The highly combustible engine at...
Fri, 3 Feb 2012 14:07:53 -0500
Some are born female; others achieve it. Jin Xing is one of the latter, in a tenacious odyssey from birth as a boy to her present life and dance career as a woman. Her “Shanghai Tango” has the same passionate obsession with identity, but doesn’t live up to the...
Thu, 2 Feb 2012 11:46:20 -0500
In light of the recent Vassar early-admissions snafu, already wary parents of students applying to college should avoid “Inadmissible.” Not that anyone else should rush to see this play about three professors in the admissions office of a small university fighting over whom to accept into its performing arts program...
Thu, 2 Feb 2012 11:46:20 -0500
In his heyday, David Merrick was the most powerful producer on Broadway. He had taste. He was prolific. He knocked out hits — “Look Back in Anger,” “Hello, Dolly!” “42nd Street.” And he could put the fear of God in actors, writers, directors and agents. When crossed, he retaliated — swiftly and...
Thu, 2 Feb 2012 00:49:15 -0500
The new family drama “Russian Transport” isn’t edgy or groundbreaking. Rather, it’s a good old-fashioned delicacy: a solid yarn, well told. Playwright Erika Sheffer can be guilty of using broad strokes, but she also succeeds in anchoring her story in a specific milieu: Russian-Jewish immigrants trying to eke...
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:26:42 -0500
The main event at New York City Ballet on Saturday night was supposed to be the first program entirely by Christopher Wheeldon — a triple bill with a premiere, an import and a mainstay. But an unchoreographed drama threatened to steal the show. Jennie Somogyi tore her right Achilles tendon just...
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:26:42 -0500
Even before Oedipus asks his daughter to identify a stranger and she calls him “some jerk-off,” you know you’re in for a wink-wink take on Sophocles. And so it goes, more or less, for five hours in “These Seven Sicknesses,” which opened last night at the Flea Theater. The...
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:15:02 -0500
After the mishaps and delays that have plagued Robert Lepage’s production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle at the Met, the most suspenseful part of the final installment was waiting for the set to break down. Actually, during the nearly six hours of “Götterdammerung” (“Twilight of the Gods”), nothing went...
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:02:24 -0500
If you want to actually hear the songs in Broadway’s “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” you may have a problem. When teen heartthrob Nick Jonas took over the role of J. Pierrepont Finch (from Daniel Radcliffe) he brought throngs of girl fans with him, hence inciting...
Sun, 29 Jan 2012 09:43:47 -0500
The No. 1 dish at Joe Allen is the sauteed calf’s liver — yes, liver! — but no one goes to Joe Allen for the food. The eatery on West 46th Street’s Restaurant Row is less a hash house than it is a hangout for show folks and the people...
Sun, 29 Jan 2012 03:04:30 -0500