Critic unbound

After months of sitting through bad plays by acclaimed authors (Ayad Akhtar's Junk, Beau Willimon's The Parisian Woman), what a treat it is to discover Miles for Mary, running at Playwrights Horizons through the end of the month. Maybe it's because there is no author, at least in the usual sense. Miles for Mary is … Continue reading Best Play of the Season →

While waiting out the January lull in Broadway theater ... I've been watching a lot of Netflix. And getting progressively more exasperated.  Five reasons why I've decided to bail out of the service: 1) Too many streaming services. Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, cable premium channels up the wazoo— how many additions to your cable bill do … Continue reading Five Reasons to Dump Netflix →

Autobiographical one-man shows are not my favorite genre, but I had hopes for John Lithgow's Stories by Heart. This two-act show — which Lithgow has been touring around the country and just brought to Broadway — is partly autobiographical (engaging reminiscences of growing up with his storytelling father), but mostly a showcase for Lithgow to … Continue reading Stories by Lithgow: Less Acting, Please →

Not an easy year for me to make my selections; few outstanding shows, though several pretty good ones. Enough, at least, for me to participate in the inevitable year-end pastime: 1. Come From Away  The grass-roots success of the Broadway year. A couple of theater unknowns from Canada (Irene Sankoff and David Hein, a husband-wife … Continue reading 10 Best Theater of 2017 →

Stars draw the crowds on Broadway these days, but seldom has shrewd casting created such an instant must-see as Steve Martin's new comedy Meteor Shower. The big attraction is a pair of acclaimed TV comedians making their Broadway debuts: Keegan-Michael Key, co-creator of the superb sketch-comedy series Key and Peele, and Amy Schumer, who has … Continue reading The Stars Don’t Align for “Meteor Shower” →

I don't want to say anything bad or disrespectful about The Band's Visit, the new musical that has just opened on Broadway after an acclaimed off-Broadway run last winter. Adapted from a little 2007 film about an Egyptian police band that winds up, by mistake, stranded in a forlorn little Israeli town,  the show is … Continue reading “The Band’s Visit”: Is “Nice” Enough? →

Can a theater be the reason a play doesn't work?  I'm starting to think that about the Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center. With its cavernous space, thrust stage and semi-circular, steeply raked seats, the place is fine for big musicals (The King and I, South Pacific), but tends to overwhelm smaller, more intricate plays. I … Continue reading Greed Is Not So Good (on Broadway) →

My reaction to the new Broadway revival of M. Butterfly, I'm afraid to say, is a giant shrug. When David Henry Hwang's play made its Broadway debut in 1988, it was a startling, even daring, effort to make sense of the strange but true story of a French diplomat in China who had a years-long … Continue reading “M. Butterfly,” Earthbound →

About 20 minutes into Time and the Conways, J.B. Priestley'a 1937 play now being revived by the Roundabout Theater Company, I was feeling the way I imagine John Osborne and the "angry young men" of British drama must have felt in the 1950s: Enough of these well-mannered, well-made plays about the rarefied concerns of the … Continue reading “Time and the Conways”: Give It Time →

I just finished a busy weekend of filmgoing at the Hamptons International Film Festival. This annual Hamptons ritual — which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year— has always struck me as a bit of a superfluous stop on the film-festival circuit.  It overlaps with the higher-profile New York Film Festival, just a hundred miles to … Continue reading Cruising the Hamptons Film Festival →