a new york-based theater blog
Moira Buffini’s new play, Handbagged, has the Queen of England and Margaret Thatcher reflecting on their shared lives together. Elizabeth, despite her reputation for conservatism, is less than pleased with her reactionary PM, while Thatcher never loses the feeling that she’s being treated like the grocer’s daughter. It is a fitting juxtaposition of British power: […]
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A man and a woman make ecstatic love. Afterward, the woman offers to make the man a sandwich before booting him out of her studio apartment. He eats the sandwich, but he doesn’t go anywhere. Over three decades after its debut, Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune may seem to possess […]
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The premise of Dave Malloy’s Octet is terrific. Staged as an Alcoholics Anonymous-style meeting for device addicts, a group of strangers congregate to share stories of their technological woes through song. Jessica (Margo Seibert) admits she is the star of a viral video, “white woman goes crazy,” while Henry (Alex Gibson) cannot break the hypnotic […]
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In 1926, when an already-censored Plough and the Stars opened at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, the crowd, taking offense at uniformed actors carrying the flag of the Irish Volunteers, rioted, throwing objects at the stage, setting off stink bombs, and fighting with the actors. Barry Fitzgerald, living up to the spirit his character, Fluther […]
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Over the course of three plays—Asuncion, The Revisionist, and The Spoils—Jesse Eisenberg has established himself as the premier satirist of guilt-ridden, ineffectual American liberalism. His work is littered with a gaggle of narcissistic, white idiots, and Happy Talk, his latest, is no exception. This is the first of his plays in which Eisenberg does not […]
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In Erica Schmidt’s adaptation, Mac Beth, a group of girls meet in an abandoned field to perform Shakespeare’s play. Very little of the text has been changed, but the staging is appropriately makeshift: the girls munch on Cheetos. Messages are sent via pink-encased iPhones. And Macbeth bears a felt crown complete with a candied ring […]
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Perhaps this production of King Lear was never going to live up to the story: after twenty-three years in Parliament, Glenda Jackson returned to acting with the most challenging Shakespearean role, typically reserved for actors of her caliber as a final achievement, one that spawns nostalgic reflections on a career that began with an historic performance […]
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