The cast of We Live Here. Photo by and courtesy of Joan Marcus.>>> Is there any topic the New York stage has been more steadily bombarded with than the dysfunctional family? Or, more precisely, the dysfunctional Jewish family? Well, here they seem to be again in Zoe Kazan’s “We Live Here.” The only reason I think they may be Jewish …
Eye on Theatre: Spouses and Other Relations By JOHN SIMON
In 2008, Michael Weller’s 50 Words featured a married New York architect, Adam Penzius, having an affair with an offstage married woman. Now we get that Midwestern woman, Melinda “Lindy” Metz, married to Hugh Metz, who runs a family bicycle-manufacturing business and is running also for political office. Lindy, mother of two teen-age boys, is a bipolar charmer, medicinal pill …
Eye on Theatre June Mayflies By JOHN SIMON
Just about everything that can go wrong with a show does so in Through a Glass Darkly, Jenny Worton’s theatrical adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s film of that name. In the first place: Why adapt one of Bergman’s lesser movies that, moreover, does not transfer comfortably onto the stage?
Eye on Theatre: Trio Triste By JOHN SIMON
<<<The Knickerbocker. Photo by Carol Rosegg. When Jonathan Marc Sherman was a very young fellow back in 1988 he wrote a delightful play called Women and Wallace, It augured a fine career for him, and a career of sorts there has been. His various other plays have been mounted in good theaters in respectable productions, but none of them …
Eye on Theatre: Differently Stark By JOHN SIMON
King Lear has my vote for the greatest play ever written, but as performed at BAM by England’s visiting Donmar Warehouse production, it is no such thing. Neither the Lear nor the Cortdelia is up to snuff, nor are Christopher Oram’s décor and costumes. Moreover, limiting the cast to bare essentials turns national tragedy into domestic drama, a kind of …
Eye on Theatre: Highfalutin Histrionics By John Simon
The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures—not since the movies of Lina Wertmulller have we had titles this long, but hers at least described the matter at hand. In Tony Kushner’s new (well, fairly new, it’s been kicking around for a while) play the title seems to have an independent life of its …
Eye on Theatre: Outcry By John Simon
The outbreak of a dread disease is a terrible thing; of an unknown one, even more so. When what came to be known as AIDS started killing homosexuals, Larry Kramer was the one who sprung to action. Not only a terrific activist, but also, it turns out, a powerful dramatist. The Normal Heart was stirring when it opened at the …
Eye on Theatre: Precarious Revivals By John Simon
How revivable is a typical boulevard comedy? That is the question revived by Garson Kanin’s just brought back Born Yesterday, a hit in 1976. Since then, however, several things have changed.
Eye on Theatre: Misrule Brittania By John Simon
Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem is a wild and crazy thing, comic and fierce, merry and smutty, three hours of not-to-be-missed riot. A huge hit in London, it comes to Broadway in that production as directed by Ian Hickson, with about half the original cast and starring the great Mark Rylance, who can do everything and packs every bit of it, from …
Eye on Theatre: Riding High By John Simon
Before I tell you anything else, I want the skimmers rather than readers, and glancers rather than skimmers, to know one thing. Whether you are theater fans, whether you like puppetry or not, whether you care about horses, the show War Horse is something you cannot afford to miss. Take it from an longtime drama critic and even earlier theater …