John Patrick Shanley’s “Outside Mullingar” is an Irish-American love letter to the auld sod.   I say this as an Irish-American (well, half) and how Shanley’s affection for the Irish informs  his four souls in rural Ireland:  an aging , widower father Tony Reilly (Jeffr...

WTF is the response to “Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise” - not only as in “what was that all about?” but also “why was this made?”  This senseless, colossal nothing in the colossal The McCourt (the enclosed, interior performance space at The Shed in Hudson Yards), promoting...

Stacey Rose’s “America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise and The Eventual  Extinction of the American Negro” is set in some dystopian, white propaganda theme park (or convention center or such) where four enslaved African Americans perform a minstrel-style, industrial show that i...

Barrington Stage Company’s INTO THE WOODS is the most uniquely and coherently conceived and the most dramatically satisfying production of the 1987 Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine classic I’d wish to see.   It’s also ravishingly beautiful with a thoroughly original...

Sharon Playhouse’s production of CRAZY FOR YOU, with the marvelous score by George and Ira Gershwin, is a perfect summer stock  musical.  There I’ve said it.  Surpassing its winning Cole Porter’s ANYTHING GOES in last year’s first season under new management, Sharon Pl...

In the soul of Michael R. Jackson’s in-your-face, scorching new musical A STRANGE LOOP is a most tender post-adolescent, coming-of-age story.  Getting there on the journey with Jackson’s protagonist, Usher (an astonishing Larry Owens), a 25 year old gay African Americ...

If you have fond memories of the charm and whimsy of Tim Burton’s deliciously ghoulish 1988 fantasy- comedy BEETLEJUICE, they will be obliterated by the stage musical version.  The bloated production with a ludicrously convoluted book and a noisy, unmemorable score see...

The performance area of Off-Broadway’s Signature Theatre, a  wide, three- quarter thrust floorspace, is transformed to a tired church basement; actors appear to be setting up for an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but what kind of therapy group is it really?  Before the...

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Margulies’  “Long Lost”, in its premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club, is a play that’s exceptionally well written, directed, cast, acted and staged.  It’s also exceptionally unoriginal.

Margulies tells a contemporary tale...