« Previous  |  Next »

Theater Review | 'Dreamgirls': Hopeful Divas Back Where It All Began

As befits a work about the essential art of repackaging in show business, “Dreamgirls” has known several distinct incarnations. First, there was the 1981 Broadway musical. Then came the 2006 movie. And now there is “Dreamgirls,” the comic strip, which ...

From BEN BRANTLEY, The New York Times,  22 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Apollo Theater,  Syesha Mercado,  Robert Longbottom,  Michael Bennett,  Roy Lichtenstein

Theater Review | 'The Orphans' Home Cycle': Heart of a Small Town, Vast in Its Loneliness

Two fresh-faced fishermen, wearing solemn expressions and suspenders, sit on a riverbank, looking as if they were waiting for Norman Rockwell to show up with his easel. “You’re on your own now,” one of them says. “The Orphans’ Home Cycle”: Jenny Dare ...

From BEN BRANTLEY, The New York Times,  19 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Horton Foote,  Norman Rockwell,  Peter Norton,  Michael Wilson,  Henry Hodges

Theater Review | 'My Wonderful Day': Quiet, Innocent Child, Always on the Watch

A compellingly still center lurks within the farcical storm of “My Wonderful Day,” the charming, rueful new comedy written and directed by the indefatigable Alan Ayckbourn, which opened Wednesday night at 59E59 Theaters as part of the Brits Off ...

From BEN BRANTLEY, The New York Times,  19 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Alan Ayckbourn,  Henry James

Theater Review | 'The Brother/Sister Plays': Lives in the Bayou Tap All the Realism of Dreams

Spinning stories becomes a blessed biological process in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “Brother/Sister Plays,” as natural and necessary as breathing. It is said of one character in this gorgeous trilogy, which opened Tuesday night at the Public Theater, ...

From BEN BRANTLEY, The New York Times,  17 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Tina Landau,  Sam Shepard,  Bertolt Brecht,  August Wilson,  Peter Brook

Theater Review | 'Ragtime': I Hear America Singing, in Syncopation

“Ragtime” has lost weight since it was last on Broadway. The judiciously pared-down production that opened Sunday night at the Neil Simon Theater is a sprinting sylph compared to the opulence-bloated show that went under the same name a decade ago. ...

From BEN BRANTLEY, The New York Times,  15 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Dodge,  Neil Simon,  E. L. Doctorow,  Henry Ford,  Mike Todd

Theater Review | 'Quartett': A Minuet Between Sexual Predators

Passion burns cold in Robert Wilson’s trance-inducing production of “Quartett,” Heiner Müller’s ruthless reimagining of Choderlos de Laclos’s 18th-century novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” Lights of many colors dye the all-too-mortal flesh of the ...

From BEN BRANTLEY, The New York Times,  8 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Robert Wilson,  Choderlos de Laclos,  Brooklyn Academy of Music,  Isabelle Huppert,  Irving Penn

Theater Review | 'Idiot Savant': Still Bouncing Off the Fun House Walls

The disembodied voice, sounding like God with a hangover, lets us know in detail what we are about to receive. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the voice rumbles by way of a preshow announcement for Richard Foreman’s “Idiot Savant,” a play that is some kind of ...

From BEN BRANTLEY, The New York Times,  4 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Richard Foreman,  Willem Dafoe,  Hugh Jackman,  Jude Law,  Bob Fosse

Theater Review | 'Brighton Beach Memoirs': Neil Simon’s Jeromes, at Home at the Nederlander

There are many rooms, impeccably kept and waxed with nostalgia, in the wooden-frame Brooklyn house that has been built on the stage of the Nederlander Theater, where David Cromer’s soft-spoken revival of Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” opened on ...

From BEN BRANTLEY, The New York Times,  2 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Neil Simon,  Eugene O'Neill,  Laurie Metcalf,  Thornton Wilder

Theater Review | 'I Got Sick Then I Got Better': The Irritating Turns on a Road to Recovery

“You look great.” Now that’s a sentence, you would think, to warm the heart of a woman who admits that she is ever hungry for reassurance. But as Jenny Allen delivers it again and again, with a variety of inflections, this most customary of ...

From BEN BRANTLEY, International Herald Tribune,  23 Oct 2009

Related Topics: James Lapine,  New York Theater Workshop,  David Lander,  Susan Miller,  Julia Sweeney

Theater Review | 'After Miss Julie': Seduction by Class Conflict

Let me just say up front that I was rooting for Sienna Miller, who is making her Broadway debut in Patrick Marber’s “After Miss Julie,” which opened Thursday night at the American Airlines Theater. She has always struck me as a game, gutsy kind of gal, ...

From BEN BRANTLEY, The New York Times,  22 Oct 2009

Related Topics: Jonny Lee Miller,  Patrick Marber,  Sienna Miller,  American Airlines,  Kelly Reilly

« Previous  |  Next »

Who is This?

Help us add to our database, by linking this writer their entry in Wikipedia or Source Watch, or by suggesting that we remove it from our index.

Suggest an Entry