Brian Friel’s oft-used fictional town of Ballybeg, Co. Donegal, marks a Chekhovian outline as well as the path to Friel’s own hopscotch bearings either side of the nearby Irish border. The Home Place, the last of his full-length original plays, is se …Read more

The chasm between our varied lives and theater’s capacity to reflect it is nothing to get down on; in fact, it’s a beautiful opportunity, and in many ways, is what this art form does do best. Red Light Winter, an excellent play by Adam Rapp, getting …Read more

For their first foray into Shakespeare, Elevator Repair Service, New York’s stalwarts of experimental theatre, tackle Measure for Measure at the Public Theatre. ERS delivers a screwball, slapstick rendering of the Bard’s problem play that is in turns …Read more

It isn’t until the final scene of Debra Whitfield’s new play FIRE that the drama’s various threads intertwine and the playwright’s ultimate purpose becomes clear. However, that doesn’t mean the rest of the play leading up to that point is inferior. I …Read more

“I think it is beautiful, what he did. I think he is brave.” That was Maria Alyokhina’s response during the interview section of the new performance piece by Belarus Free Theatre’s Burning Doors. It was a question posed to her by an audience member r …Read more

Sometimes, a play really surprises me. Tomorrow in the Battle, a high stakes drama on love and morality by Kieron Barry, directed by Tana Sirois, is an effective and fun piece of theater storytelling. Despite the fact that the play had little product …Read more

Dickie Beau’s work is as personally spiritual as it is rigorous and inventive, as intimate as it is interesting, and his limited run at Abrons — part of the Crossing the Line Festival — was a must-see for those enveloped in the performance matrix as …Read more

Whiskey Pants: The Mayor Williamsburg, a new musical directed and composed by Christian De Gre, is a remarkably silly new work, now up at the HERE Arts Center. And while some of the silliness leaves something to be desired, a lot of it is at the beat …Read more

Emmy Award-winning Letterman writer Ted Greenberg takes us back to December 18, 1987 in his taxi cab — a pivotal moment in the young Harvard student’s life. It’s the nine-year anniversary of his overdue paper on Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. I …Read more

For those who were weaned on Jackie Gleason’s sitcom The Honeymooners, there’s cause to rejoice. There’s a new musical based upon the 1950s classic characters, directed by award-winning John Rando (Urinetown, On The Town) premiering at The Paper Mill …Read more