The expansion of the Shaw Festival season to include a duo of holiday shows every December has proven to be a truly winning innovation. The mini-season in the winter forms a welcome bridge between the festival’s regularly scheduled April-October season and makes the company feel like a full year player rather than a summer getaway. […]
On stage until December 18th in a well-cast and capable production at Crow’s Theatre, Lolita Chakrabarti’s Red Velvet tells a fictionalized account of the life of Ira Aldridge, one of the first Black actors to become a prominent Shakespeare performer. The production is a testament to Crow’s heads up approach to casting within the […]
The success of Hannah Moscovitch’s new play Post Democracy largely comes down to wether or not Jesse LaVercombe manages to make you think he’s generally a somewhat okay guy. The rest of the production is strong in less crucial ways. Teresa Przybylski’s stylish set has a cleverly critical total lack of character and is […]
There is a joke once seen on tumblr that describes different nationalities’ approaches to death in stories. American writers write I WILL DIE FOR LOVE! British writers write I WILL DIE FOR COUNTRY! And Russian writers write I WILL JUST DIE! An overly simplistic take but this critic’s first thought when seeing that joke was […]
John Patrick Shanley’s difficult drama Doubt has aged oddly. First produced in 2004, one year after the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team won a Pulitzer for its reporting on abuses in the Catholic Church, the play twists itself into knots attempting to keep as much, ahem, doubt as possible alive in the audience’s mind, presumably as […]
What a way to end the first season! Whether he meant to or not, Aemund has plunged the Blacks and the Greens into war. Lucerys is dead (although you know what they say, if you didn’t see the body…), Arrax is chomped, and the first season of House of the Dragon is over. There […]
Running through Saturday at the Chain Theater in Manhattan (312 W 36th street), Maiden Productions’ take on Connor McPherson’s The Night Alive is phenomenal. Boasting a lights-out cast, visionary design, and accomplished direction, Maiden delivers an outstanding inaugural production and solidifies itself as a company to keep tabs on. The Night Alive centers on […]
Spoilers ahead, friends. It’s a simple formula, really. House of the Dragon is better than Game of Thrones, because it has more dragons, better CGI, and a bigger (by far) budget. Rings of Power is better than House of the Dragon because it has a somehow even bigger budget, better writing, and a powerhouse […]