The Best We Could ****

Frank Wood, Aya Cash

By: Isa Goldberg

March 21, 2023: Emily Feldman’s new play, “The Best We Could ” (a family tragedy), at The Manhattan Theatre Club, while contemporary in style, harkens back to classical Greek tragedy.

Narrated by a character named Maps (Maureen Sebastian), the tale comes to life seamlessly, as the actors walk into the events, and circumstances that will determine their fate. Maps leads us on this father daughter road trip, while pointing out to the audience from the very beginning, that this is a performance.

Parade *****

Micaela Diamond and Ben Platt.

By: David Sheward

March 18, 2023: Perhaps the most powerful moment in Parade, the stunning revival of Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown’s 1998 musical about the infamous Leo Frank case, is a silent one. Ben Platt, who gives a stirring performance as Frank, a man falsely accused of murdering a young girl, sits silently high up on Dane Laffrey’s evocative set, lit by Heather Gilbert to suggest a jail cell. Platt remains seated at a simple table throughout the intermission with a look of desperation on his face. We know the character’s ultimate fate—Frank was kidnapped and lynched after his sentence was commuted to life in prison—and it makes this unspoken sequence all the more shattering.

A Doll’s House ****1/2

Jessica Chastain and Okieriete Onaodowan.

By: Samuel L. Leiter

March 17, 2023: Jessica Chastain’s compelling performance of Nora in the current revival of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Hudson Theatre reminds us not only that this is the most frequently revived of all the Norwegian dramatist’s plays but that Nora is one of the most sought-after roles by a leading actress of any from the late 19th century on. The role it replaced as an inevitable marker of female stardom was Marguerite Gautier in Dumas fils’ Camille.

The Harder They Come ***1/2

Natey Jones (center) and the company of ‘The Harder They Come’ at The Public Theate

By: Paulanne Simmons

March 16, 2023: The Harder They Come , a musical based on the 1972 Jamaican crime film directed by Perry Henzell and starring reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, has all the elements of a hit: a lovable rogue hero played by a talented lead (Natey Jones as Ivan), great music and an enthusiastic ensemble. It also benefits from the swiftly moving direction of Tony Taccone and Sergio Trujillo.

A Doll’s House , The Best We Could (a family tragedy)

Okieriete Onaodowan and Jessica Chastain in “A Doll’s House”.

By: David Sheward

March 11, 2023: Before Jamie Lloyd’s minimalist and strangely powerful revival of A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen’s prophetic proto-feminist masterpiece, begins, audience members at the Hudson Theater are treated to the spectacle of Oscar-winning Jessica Chastain sitting in a simple chair on a revolving turntable. As Chastain is spun slowly around, she fixes the audience with a cold stare. Many whip out their camera-phones to take videos or pictures, as if she were an art exhibit. This pre-show photo op reinforces Ibsen’s theme of society treating women like dolls or objects. Chastain is objectified by the audience just as Ibsen’s heroine Nora is objectified by her condescending husband Torvald. The year of the play (1875) is superimposed above Soutra Gilmour’s stark, bare setting to remind us that such sexism has been around for a long time and it hasn’t gone completely away.

Crumbs From The Table Of Joy ***

Malika Samuel, Shanel Bailey

By: Samuel L. Leiter

March 9, 2023: In recent years, Lynn Nottage, with a Tony nomination (MJ)and two Pulitzer Prizes (Sweat, Ruined) , has soared into the stratosphere of American playwriting, much—but not all—of her work focusing on African American concerns. So an opportunity to revisit one of her earlier works, Crumbs from the Table of Joy , which premiered at Off Broadway’s Second Stage in 1995, and is now being revived by Off Broadway’s Keen Company at Theatre Row, is a welcome one, if only to see how far her work has come since then. Numerous moments glow with Ms. Nottage’s talent, but, overall, the play (and production) is patchy, the work of a young writer feeling her artistic oats, even if they haven’t entirely been digested.

Becomes A Woman ****

Emma Pfitzer Price and Antoinette Lavecchia.

By: Isa Goldberg

March 9, 2023: Consummate craftmanship distinguishes The Mint Theatre’s world premiere of Betty Smith’s 1931 drama, “Becomes a Woman”. Set in that period, around The Great Depression, the characters – hard working store clerks, and their customers at Kress Dime Store, don striking couture. Sophisticated dress was a sign of the time.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof ***

By Paulanne Simmons

March 6, 2023: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, reputedly Tennessee Williams’ favorite among his oeuvre, touches on all the playwright’s preferred themes: the inevitability of death, the impossible pursuit of truth, the destructive power of sexual desire and its repression. This makes for passionate drama. In fact, the key to a successful production lies in discovering a means of toning down the action until the appropriate moment for the ultimate explosion.

& Juliet , The Seagull/Woodstock,NY

Lorna Courtney, Betsy Wolfe, Justin David Sullivan and Melanie LaBarrie in “&Juliet”.

By: David Sheward

March 4, 2023: Most updated adaptations of classic theater works deliver few fresh ideas or interpretations and usually elicit the response, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Just present the original and have done with it.” But two current variations on oft-produced pieces prove the exception to this rule. Both & Juliet on Broadway at the Stephen Sondheim Theater after a smash run in London and The Seagull: Woodstock, NY presented by the New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center, offer new insights for contemporary audiences without tearing down their source material.

Love ***

Alex Austin (Dean) and Janet Etuk (Emma).

By: Samuel L. Leiter

March 3, 2023: As I left the Park Avenue Armory after seeing British playwright-director Alexander Zeldin’s acclaimed, civically responsible drama, LOVE, I couldn’t help overhearing another theatregoer say to her friend, “That was so powerful.” This is a feeling many in the audience seemed to share as they gave the cast a standing ovation minutes earlier. The play’s subject of homelessness is certainly powerful, being as familiar to people in England (where the production originated in 2016 at the National Theatre) and America, as in the various European countries in which Love—part of a trilogy of socially conscious plays called Inequities—has been seen.

Hercules ****

Powerhouse Musical Hercules Opens at NJ’s Paper Mill Playhouse, Running through March 19, 2023

By: Ellis Nassour

March 2, 2023 – Paper Mill Playhouse (22 Brookside Drive, Millburn, NJ) has officially opened Disney’s totally revamped mega musical, aptly titled Hercules. If you’ve been waiting for a lavish and fun and very musical event to get you back to live theatre, this is it. Hercules, the saga of the strongman son of Zeus seeking divine status, has music by Disney treasure and EGOT Alan Menken (Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Newsies, more) and lyrics by celebrated Tony winner (City of Angels), Oscar and Grammy nominee and million-selling songwriter David Zippel — the lyricist for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s just arrived Bad Cinderella and Disney’s Mulan).

Jennifer Holliday @ 54 Below

Jennifer Holiday

By: Patrick Christiano

Broadway legend, Jennifer Holliday, brought us into her world with an emotionally blazing display of her artistry through song and stories.

February 25, 2023: Jennifer Holliday’s return to 54 Below is simply sensational, an intimate mind-blowing adventure that chronicles her life in song with an artistry that is amazing to witness. In between songs the Tony and Grammy award winner reveals herself with candid self-deprecating accounts of her journey, often hysterical, but always poignant, in show business from age 19 to 62.

Pictures From Home ***

Nathan Lane (Irving Sultan)and Danny Burstein (Larry Sultan).

By: Paulanne Simmons

February 26, 2023: In 1992, photographer Larry Sultan published “Pictures from Home,” a photographic memoir that chronicled 30 years of his parents’ life. It quickly became a classic. But it’s hard to understand why a book of family photographs and narrated memories would translate into a successful Broadway play.

The Wanderers **1/2, Cornelia Street *1/2

Eddie Kaye Thomas (Abe) and Sarah Cooper (Sophie) in “The Wanderers”.

By: David Sheward

February 20, 2023: Two new Off-Broadway productions on the smaller stages of two major theater companies have large ambitions, but only offer tired tropes we’ve seen too many times before. Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers at Roundabout Theater Company’s Laura Pels stage does have a modicum of genuine emotion and insight, but too much of the plot, acting and direction are stagey and stilted. Simon Stephens and Mark Eitzel’s musical Cornelia Street about a struggling Greenwich Village eatery at Atlantic Theater Company’s basement studio space wants to be hip and compassionate but winds up serving us a warmed-over, unsatisfying meal.

The Wanderers ***

Katie Holmes (Julia Cheever) and Eddie Kaye Thomas (Abe). in “The Wanderers”.

By: Samuel L. Leiter

February 16, 2023: Marion Williams’s set for Anna Ziegler’s intelligent, sometimes compelling, occasionally amusing, but nonetheless unsatisfying The Wanderers is a spare, neutral space occupied by desks, chairs, and piles of books, scattered about the stage and rearranged when necessary. The high walls are covered with countless manuscript pages.It nicely accommodates the needs of the play, a self-consciously literary drama about two married couples, by allowing the action to move fluidly back and forth among scenes focused on each couple. The play premiered at San Diego’s Old Globe and played at several other regionals before its Covid-delayed appearance at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre, where it opened tonight.