Friday, May 27, 2011

The Best Is Yet to Come

The Cy Coleman revue The Best Is Yet to Come is now at 59E59. I actually love Coleman's work — one of the most swinging on Broadway — but the show is frustratingly uneven. My review's here.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Cradle and All

Daniel Goldfarb's Cradle and All opened at MTC last night. Listening to yuppies talk about having kids — or not — isn't really exotic when you live in Park Slope.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Knickerbocker

Jerry is 40 and about to be a dad, so naturally he has a lot to talk about. That's pretty much the plot of Knickerbocker, which just opened at the Public. My review's here.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Lucky Guy

The new musical Lucky Guy brought me back to those heady 1990s and their kitschy revues. With several judicious cuts (20 songs?!), it could be a nifty show. Review here.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Radio Play

Reggie Watts and Tommy Smith's Radio Play left me cold at PS 122. I suspect my enjoyment of the show may have been enhanced by the ingestion of brain-altering substances but alas, I went in perfectly sober.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Squealer

It's not easy to pull off shock tactics. The Amoralists mostly succeed, but their feats only underline how hard it is to pull off shock tactics. The gory new off-off-Broadway show Squealer, at Theater for the New City, is an example of how not to do it. Still, it's always a pleasure to see Sarah Lemp in action.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark

Oh man, how excellent is Lynn Nottage's new play! By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is just fantastic, both hilarious and very sharp. Click here for my review.

Monday, May 09, 2011

A Minister's Wife

A Minister's Wife opened last night at Lincoln Center. It's a musical adaptation of Shaw's Candida, and is fairly bloodless...until the very end. Talk about a late wake-up call.

Sunday, May 08, 2011

King Lear

Michael Grandage and Derek Jacobi's King Lear is at BAM, and my review was in yesterday's paper. If you're keen on seeing a Lear, there's two more productions coming later this year, so you may want to sit this one out.

Friday, May 06, 2011

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide...

Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures has finally landed. It's not everyday you hear discussions of dialectical materialism on a New York stage, but boy is this show a slog. My review's thataway.

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Be a Good Little Widow

I really liked Bekah Brunstetter's new play, Be a Good Little Widow. It's at Ars Nova (meaning you can get cheap tix) through May, and well worth a trip to west west W. 54th St.

Monday, May 02, 2011

The School for Lies

I loved David Ives' The School for Lies, a rhymed riff on The Misanthrope. The Rialto is celebrating the end of the season but what they mean is the end of the Broadway season — this new show is proof that the Off scene continues unabated.

Leslie Kritzer's back

On yesterday's paper, I previewed Leslie Kritzer's new solo show at Joe's Pub. You can still catch it tonight and tomorrow night. It's nice to see the Kritz back at Joe's, where she triumphed in the classic Leslie Kritzer Is Patti LuPone at Les Mouches back in 2006-07.