Samuel Beckett, perhaps the twentieth century’s greatest playwright, met his idol James Joyce in Paris during the late 1920s. The young writer actually assisted Joyce in the completion of his final work Finnegan’s Wake. What ideas passed in intimate …Read more

Leo Tolstoy alleged, “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” With all the flair of a magician, Heidi Schreck conjures both in her new play Grand Concourse, now running at Playwrights Horizons …Read more

It might seem like a curious thing for an off-Broadway show to premiere at 11 a.m. on a weekday, but at The Actors Temple Theatre there is a method to such madness. The Love Note, a new musical written by Gail Phaneuf and directed by Russell Garrett, …Read more

David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones took the Tony for Best Play in 1972. It also – and I remember it well – shook up New York theater like a 5 on the Richter scale. Nothing before had so slammed together ideas of classic Americana and the broken jetsam of …Read more

In their production of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the New York Deaf Theatre presents an outstanding, interpretive rendition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic story. The ensemble, made up of deaf, ASL-fluent and hearing voice actor …Read more

Richard Pearson Thomas’ comic opera A Wake or a Wedding, now playing at the Rose Nagelberg Theater/Baruch Performing Arts Center, receives a vivacious world premiere production from Encompass New Opera Theater, a company dedicated to creating, develo …Read more

If birth is the sweetest ache of motherhood, then loss of a child must be hell’s torment. Sarah Ruhl’s newest play, The Oldest Boy, touches hell. Premiering at Lincoln Center, The Oldest Boy is the third play in the ongoing relationship Lincoln Cente …Read more

I heard it said once that theater is everywhere, but I don’t know if I ever really invested in that corny platitude until last Friday, when I had the pleasure of seeing a truly moving piece of stagecraft miles away from the lights of Broadway in a ch …Read more

When the lights rise on William Goulet’s new play Filler, the off-kilter relationship between its central characters, Marian (Gabriele Schafer) and Adler (Ross Pivec), is firmly established: She is trying to walk him through a sexual role-play sessio …Read more

Nefarious Laboratory’s Awesome People, part of the 3rd Annual Gotham Storytelling Festival, showcased a multitude of storytelling talent, hosted by Brad Lawrence, a favorite with Moth audiences. In the teeny black-box theater UNDER St. Marks, four pe …Read more