‘Enemy of the People’: The Berliner version

When the theater becomes a courtroom

The Schaubühne Theatre from Berlin is back, with a daring, defiant version of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People that sheds new light on a generation struggling to disengage itself from Germany’s catastrophic 20th-Century history.

Carol Rocamora

Nov 12, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

‘I Am My Own Wife’ in Norristown

A legend in her own mind (or his)

I Am My Own Wife concerns a German transvestite who survived both the Nazis and the Communists. But were his/her heroics genuine?

Steve Cohen

Nov 12, 2013 · Articles · 2 minute read

Harold Pinter's 'Betrayal' on Broadway

Tragedy or travesty?

What’s the point in watching a play with glamorous superstars like Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, if you’re not going to derive any pleasure from it?

Carol Rocamora

Nov 06, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

‘The Glass Menagerie’ in New York

A director who listens to his author

In John Tiffany’s tender production of The Glass Menagerie, the individual performances offer heartfelt interpretations of Tennessee Williams’s immortal characters. Cherry Jones may be the most formidable Amanda I’ve seen, while Zachary Quinto’s touching Tom is ironic to the point of tragicomedy.

Carol Rocamora

Nov 02, 2013 · Articles · 6 minute read

‘Once’ at the Academy of Music (2nd review)

Not quite a concert, not quite a play

Once is a miniature folk concert accompanied by a slender story about a man and a woman who briefly come together, then go their separate ways.

Steve Cohen

Nov 02, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

‘Once’ at the Academy of Music (1st review)

Can music keep us together?

What’s more irresistible than two people falling in love to music? Especially when you can go on stage and order a beer and listen to Irish music at the same time? Whether such a love can last— that’s another story.

Naomi Orwin

Nov 02, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Curio Theatre’s lesbian ‘Romeo and Juliet’

When gender is irrelevant

Everyone producing Shakespeare these days is adapting the Bard somehow. So why not a lesbian Romeo and Juliet? The tension of the gender swap grips the experienced theatergoer throughout the performance.

Alaina Johns

Oct 29, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Donmar’s ‘Julius Caesar’ in Brooklyn

Friends, Romans— and women, too

Phyllida Lloyd’s ingenious production of Julius Caesar stages Shakespeare’s classic in a women’s prison with an all-female cast. This audacious concept reveals the play’s relevance to what’s happening in our turbulent political world today.

Carol Rocamora

Oct 26, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Irish Rep’s ‘Juno and the Paycock’ in New York

The boil on the Boyles

The seductive Sean O’Casey masterpiece, Juno and the Paycock, runs the gamut from hilarity to heartbreak in a milieu constricted by both financial and emotional poverty, as well as suppressed rage at the insignificance of Irish lives as filtered through church-influenced godly standards of purity.

Myra Chanin

Oct 25, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Danai Gurira’s ‘The Convert’ at the Wilma

Who’s the savage?

Danai Gurira’s The Convert uses the classic story of Pygmalion to explore the clash of religion and culture in colonial Africa. The key players, Gurira makes clear, are not the male warriors but the deceptively strong women who linger on the fringes of the struggle.

Naomi Orwin

Oct 22, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read