a new york-based theater blog
Angel Allen (Alfie Fuller), who used to be a back-up singer at the Cotton Club, has just been fired from her most recent gig. She arrives home drunk, carried for at least the last two blocks by her friend Guy Jacobs (John-Andrew Morrison) and a handsome stranger, Leland Cunningham (Khiry Walker). Guy is a costume […]
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The first and most important thing about Yaël Farber’s revival of Hamlet is that it is one of the best-spoken Shakespeares I have heard in years. These are actors who both understand the meaning of the language and respect the rhythm of the poetry. They remind us that Shakespeare, despite his reputation to the contrary, […]
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As far as we know, Timon of Athens was never staged in Shakespeare’s lifetime. It is rarely staged in ours. In terms of genre, it is akin to his late romances, beginning as a Ben-Jonson-style comedy and ending in Lear-like tragedy. As with Pericles and Two Noble Kinsman, it is a collaboration, and here the […]
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In Simon Stone’s modernization of Medea, the avenging wife is the former research physician Anna (Rose Byrne), who has recently been released from a mental institution after poisoning her husband, Lucas (Bobby Cannavale). Lucas is also a research physician—one who has relied on his wife’s intellect for his professional success—and so Anna snaps when she […]
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Writing about New York during the summer of 1943, James Baldwin recalled that Black soldiers received their military training in the south: thus, “the people I knew felt, mainly, a peculiar kind of relief when they knew their boys were being shipped out of the south, to do battle overseas.” Death at the hands of […]
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Fefu (Amelia Workman) hosts a group of friends at her New England home, ostensibly to rehearse for an upcoming educational fundraiser. The rehearsal, however, takes up little of the action in Fefu and Her Friends, María Irene Fornés’ witty, experimental play from the ‘seventies about a group of unfulfilled women who unwind and unload for […]
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Chris has a crappy childhood—several, actually. First dad dies, then mom, and then a diving accident lands Chris in the hospital. The legal guardian takes off with an ex-boyfriend, and Chris is adopted by the doctor assigned to treat the concussion. But The Underlying Chris, a new play by Will Eno, is a cradle-to-the-grave affair, […]
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