Thursday, November 20, 2025
In Hansol Jung’s tender, poignant and humorously human Wild Goose Dreams, The Public Theater’s entire third floor space is transformed into a the city of Seoul, South Korea (the inventive and imaginative design is credited to Public and Broadway veteran, Clint Ramos) through a vibrant visual plethora of candy-colored campaigns and neon notifications with a small sampling of blown-up family photos scattered between. This manic mosaic sets the chaotic tone of a modern world where various sights and sound bites compete for attention -- though that only creates a feeling of deeper isolation amidst all the noise. But the eye-bruising visual
Reviews
‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui’ at Classic Stage Company
What does cauliflower resemble? Fossilized flowers? Dead algae? Brain tissue? Perhaps Bertolt Brecht had these and others in mind creating a "Cauliflower War" as the cataclysmic event of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, his deliberately unfunny lampooning of Adolph Hitler. Brecht's protest play is now at the Classic Stage Company with a mesmerizing Raúl Esparza in the title role in John Doyle's uneven production. Brecht's inspiration for his 1941 play was Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. Released one year before Arturo UI's premiere, Chaplin's intentionally funny film sends-up both Hitler and Mussolini. (Chaplin not only resembled Hitler, they were born days apart.) Unlike The
The Chinese Lady at Theatre Row
The Chinese Lady is a shattering story of how our western culture’s scopophilia leads us to make “freaks” of those who are different to ourselves. Our obsessive voyeurism does not lead to understanding of others but rather a desire to possess, command and sometimes destroy the objects of our incessant gaze. This is one of the most original, thought-provoking and necessary works I have ever seen. It is a production that excels on every single level – text, direction, performance and design. I am still haunted by the brilliance of the insights, the emotionality unleashed in the spaces between words
The Mobile Unit’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The PUBLIC Theater
Though some of the fantastical fairies and magically made-up men and women may have hung up their glittery wings and cast off their gilded lids and long lashes on November 1st, the true enchantment continues through November 17th at the Public Theater with The Mobile Unit’s playful production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This costumed comedy of trickery is the perfect treat for the post-Halloween season. And, thanks to the mission of The Mobile Unit (a reinvention of the “Mobile Theater” originally founded in 1957 by Joe Papp) that art should be free and accessible to everyone -- the
“Happy Birthday, Wanda June” at the Duke on 42nd Street
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote this piece in 1970. For better or worse, it's highly relevant to America in 2018. It's about men who like to kill, and about men who don't. Harold Ryan (Jason O'Connell) is an Hemingway-esque sort of fellow, a hard-drinking, war-fighting, animal-hunting he-man. He's been missing 8 years in the Amazon with his pilot Colonel Looseleaf Harper (Craig Wesley Divino) who dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and who seems rather sad about it. Harold has been declared legally dead, and this creates something of a problem when he turns up on his birthday. His wife, Penelope (Kate MacCluggage),
2018 BAM Next Wave Festival: Jerome Robbins’ ‘Watermill’
A man looks back on his life. As ballet plots go, Watermill is fairly straightforward. It's in the telling that makes it Jerome Robbins' most theatrical and intimate work. Predating the first Next Wave Festival by 11 years, the seldom-seen 1972 dance appeared at this year's Festival as part of the Jerome Robbins Centennial Celebration with recent New York City Ballet retiree Joaquin De Luz and students from the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College SUNY. Robbins applied elements of his early modern dance training, work in Yiddish theatre, and Japanese Noh to Watermill. The choreographer said, "The ballet itself is influenced
Sesar at Theatre Row
Sesar is the piece all solo shows want to be when they grow up. Although, Orlando Pabotoy plays so many characters if feels like there is a huge cast peopling the stage in this astounding production. It’s an intelligent, vital discourse on the nature of birthing an artist. Sesar also tackles the use of language and how empty words can be when they are not colored in with truthful connection and understanding of context. It’s a memoir, a memory fuelled expression of navigating a war torn world and finding courage in the well worn words of a master of his
India Pale Ale at MTC at New York City Center –Stage 1
Jaclyn Backhaus is breaking bread and building enduring bridges with her epic theatrical feast –India Pale Ale. It’s a story of close knit family claustrophobia, of big dreams never spoken out loud, of lost love, of the rhetoric of “othering”, of ancestors that arrive in the present moment when courage is required and of the ocean of life carrying curious people to new lands. It’s crammed full of everything – a lucky packet of sensations. We zoom into complex, naturalistic family interactions and then suddenly zoom out into a Punjabi Bhangra dance celebration. You are constantly taken by surprise with
Group.BR presents ‘Inside the Wild Heart’
“I am so mysterious that I don’t even understand myself.” Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) Ukrainian-born Clarice Lispector achieved fame as a 23-year-old in her adopted country of Brazil with the publication of her first novel, Near to the Wild Heart. In the four decades following her death, biographies and translations led to her re-evaluation as an early innovator of the male dominated Latin American "Magic Realism" movement. The Jewish author has never been more popular, "her" Twitter feed @RecitoClarice has one million followers. There are many ways to present someone who wrote ”to save somebody's life...probably my own." Group. BR, New York City's only Brazilian
“The Niceties” at The Studio at Stage II
The Manhattan Theatre Club's production of Eleanor Burgess' “The Niceties” is a thoroughly enjoyable, thoughtful piece. Set at an elite university in the northeast, it is the story of a white, female, history professor and an ambitious, black woman majoring in political science. They meet to discuss the latter's paper on the American revolution, and the exchange rapidly takes them into discussions of race, privilege and generational attitudes. It gets ugly, and the premise that these sisters are on the same side in The Struggle rings hollow. Yet, somehow, it irritates because there was so much potential that went unrealized