PARENTS’ EVENING

In “Parents’ Evening”–the ninety-minute trifle currently premiering at the Flea Theatre–Judy (Julianne Nicholson) and Michael (James Waterston) are a young, upper-middle class couple (she’s a lawyer, he’s a struggling novelist) gearing up to meet with their ten-year-old daughter Jessica’s teacher on parent-teachers night. Well, Michael is gearing up–mentally, anyway–while Judy is anchored to their [...]

ENRON

Proving once again that a talented writer can fashion a play out of just about anything, here comes “Enron”, British scribe Lucy Prebble’s look at the rise and fall of “America’s Most Innovative Company” which, in the 1990s, became the poster child for corporate greed and corruption.
Stage vet Norbert Leo Butz plays Jeffrey Skilling, the [...]

THE STRIKING VIKING STORY PIRATES

One floor below the thousands of titles at the world famous Drama Book Shop–in the basement level performance space known as the Arthur Seelen Theatre–the laughter of children can be heard every Saturday afternoon (along with a few whoops and screams) as the shop’s resident theatre company, the Striking Viking Story Pirates, takes the stage.
The [...]

THE MIRACLE WORKER

Now we can add Abigail Breslin and Alison Pill to the list of actresses who have tackled the roles of Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, in the 1950s classic, “The Miracle Worker”, currently running at the Circle in the Square theatre.
The story is a familiar one: born normal, but turned deaf [...]

GOD OF CARNAGE

Michael and Veronica have invited Alan and Annette over for a little chat. It seems their boys have had a bit of an altercation at the playground, and Michael and Veronica want to find out what caused it.
That’s the wafer-thin plot of French playwright Yasmina Reza’s 2009 Tony-winning comedy, “God of Carnage” and, by [...]

FELA!

“Fela!” is a whirlwind of song and dance, a perpetual motion machine in which all the parts are nearly always moving, always gyrating, largely in synch with the Afro-beat rhythms that give the show its pulse.
The star (and he is very much the star; he has nearly all the lines, and participates in practically all [...]

SUPERIOR DONUTS

Expecting even the most talented playwright to follow up a Pulitzer Prize-winner with a second Prize-winning effort is like… well, expecting a ballplayer who has hit .380 one season to manage to bat .390 the next. (Never mind .400; no one has hit that high since Ted Williams in 1941.) It’s conceivable, of course, but [...]

THE TOXIC AVENGER

The proof is in the pudding (or in the green, oozing slime): In the right hands, even a Grade Z horror movie can be turned into a Grade A musical. Case in point: “The Toxic Avenger”, now concluding its run (it plays through January 3rd) at New World Stages.
Thanks to a rockin’ score by longtime [...]