Thursday, November 21, 2024
What drew me to Joshua Harmon’s new play "Skintight" was the opportunity to see Idina Menzel in a non-singing role. Ironically the play starts with Ms. Menzel, as indignant divorcee Jodi Isaac, delivering a lengthy screed about her ex’s engagement to a young twit half his age. It is a comic tour de force and I doubt that anyone without her singer’s lungs could have pulled it off. Jodi has impetuously flown into Manhattan to seek consolation from her father, Elliot (Jack Wetherall), a wealthy fashion mogul who is about to turn seventy. But seeking solace from Daddy is like trying
Author: Jane Dentinger
Travesties at American Airlines Theatre
All great writers—especially playwrights—become, at some point, drunk on their own words. Ben Johnson accused Shakespeare of such literary inebriation. I think the same could be said of Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee and James Joyce—which brings me nicely to Tom Stoppard and his own great, besotted spillage of verbiage, TRAVESTIES, revived by the Roundabout Theatre Company. I first saw this play on Broadway in 1975 with the wonderful John Wood as Henry Carr. That was in my salad days, when I was green in judgment—by which I mean a lot of the play was WAY over my head. Yet I still
Babette’s Feast at The Theatre at St. Clement’s
In the course of my many years watching live theater, I have, several times, been fascinated when something goes wrong during a performance. And I’ll tell you why a bit later. Conceived and developed by Abigail Killeen, written by Rose Courtney and directed by Karin Coonrod, the Theatre at St. Clement’s production of BABETTE’S FEAST owes more to the original Isak Dinesen short story than to the Oscars-winning 1987 film of the same name. Set in the late 1800s in the small village of Berlevǻg, Norway, it tells the story of two lovely sisters, Martine (Abigail Killeen) and Philippa (Juliana Francis Kelly),
Bright Colors and Bold Patterns
Bright Colors and Bold Patterns Soho Playhouse Snapshot Review: Never Laughed So Hard Jane Dentinger, Reviewer Be you straight, gay or somewhere in between, you know someone like Gerry, the one man motor who drives Bright Colors and Bold Patterns. He’s the guy who shows up at the party over-wound, over-medicated and over the top. The guy who will suck every cubic inch of air out of the room, even as he asks you how you’re doing. The guy you’d happily strangle except for the fact that he’s too damn funny to kill. Drew Droege, who wrote and stars in this one-man show directed