A real miracle (not on 34th Street)

Miracle in Bryn Athyn (such as it is)

For the last 60 years or so, no Christmas tale has bored people of all ages more than Miracle on 34th Street. Who could have imagined the genuine miracle this show produced last weekend at my conservative Christian high school alma mater?

Alaina Johns

Dec 10, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Pig Iron’s ‘Twelfth Night’ (1st review)

A night of Shakespearean hits and misses

Pig Iron Theater attacked Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with all the gusto and finesse of a bar brawl, to the audience’s delight, but not so much to mine. But check out that theater!

Gary L. Day

Dec 10, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Beckett’s ‘All That Fall’ in New York

Two battered old souls, together for eternity

Nothing much happens in Beckett, just as nothing much happens in Chekhov. Except the passage of time… and a lifetime.

Carol Rocamora

Dec 10, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Musical ‘Nerds’ at PTC (2nd review)

Gates vs. Jobs

This history of the high-tech rivalry between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs is wacky and ridiculous, but that’s the formula that worked for The Book of Mormon and The Producers.

Steve Cohen

Dec 07, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

‘Nerds’: A high-tech musical (1st review)

Revenge of the geeks

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as nerds and then moguls really did change the world, and now we all have to “turn off our cell phones” when we go to see a musical comedy about how this state of affairs came about.

Naomi Orwin

Dec 07, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Lydia Diamond’s ‘Stick Fly’ at the Arden

Guess who’s coming to dinner, with a twist

When two adult sons introduce their girlfriends to their parents on the same weekend, sibling rivalries flare, class distinctions divide and family secrets unravel. It’s a familiar story with a unique difference: This family is rich, well educated and black.

Steve Cohen

Dec 03, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Brecht’s ‘Good Person of Szechwan’ at the Public Theater

A truly good life: My generation and yours

This irreverent, kitschy, politically incorrect version of Brecht’s cynical parable made me squirm. But my playwriting students loved it. Brecht probably would have loved it, too.

Carol Rocamora

Dec 03, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

‘Hands Across Veronica’ at Walking Fish

Body image: The way we live now

Gin Hobbs’s Hands Across Veronica is a dark comedy that uses a tragic format to describe the way we live now: obsessed with image, and bereft of self.

Robert Zaller

Dec 02, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘Richard III’ in New York

Boys will be girls (again)

Everything about these two current productions— presented just as they were 400 years ago— is wonderful. You rarely hear Shakespeare’s poetry spoken so beautifully and clearly on the stage.

Carol Rocamora

Nov 26, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Bruce Norris’s ‘Domesticated’ in New York

Pity the poor philandering husband

Using Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Wiener as his prototypes, Bruce Norris’s blistering black comedy tells the story of a politician caught in a humiliating public sex scandal and beset by angry women. If only the protagonist’s anguished cry sounded more like his own and less like Philip Roth’s or Woody Allen’s.

Carol Rocamora

Nov 17, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read