Cry-Baby: The Musical
Review by Amy Krivohlavek
The brainchild of a crackerjack creative team including “The
Daily Show’s” David Javerbaum, Cry-Baby marks John Waters’s anticipated return to Broadway, where his first
movie-to-musical, Hairspray, swept
the Tony Awards in 2003. But Cry-Baby is a hair product of a different color: This formulaic love story of a good
girl and a bad boy will show you a good time, but it won’t make your hair stand
on end.....more
The Importance of Being Earnest
Review by Christopher Zara
Comedy doesn’t always age well. Revisit, for argument’s
sake, the “Austin Powers” trilogy, or pretty much anything starring Rob
Schneider, to witness how quickly those scenarios that seemed so funny a few
years ago can lose their charm. It’s that much more refreshing, consequently,
to watch The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s 113-year-old sitcom of manners,....more
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Review by Nick Breault
Lies, deception, sex, brutal honesty, love: these are the
themes prevalent throughout Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, now showing at the American Airlines
Theatre. Graphic and at times uncomfortable, Liasons is a fantastic theatrical rendition of Pierre Choderlos de
Laclos’s 1782 novel.
....more
The Eccentricities of a Nightingale
Review by Andrea M. Meek
Like Blanche DuBois in A
Streetcar Named Desire and Laura
Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, the high-strung Alma Winemiller in The Eccentricities of a Nightingale reflects Tennessee Williams’s penchant for fragile, emotionally unstable female
characters. In the play, which
Williams wrote in 1951 as a revision of his earlier work, Summer and Smoke, Alma (the excellent Mary Bacon) is a
misunderstood and ostracized oddity in the small town of Glorious Hill,
Mississippi, just before World War I.,....more
What’s My Line? – Live on Stage
Review by Meg Van Huygen
After three years in Los Angeles, the stage production of What’s
My Line? has made a smashing
transition to the West Village. Produced by Jim Newman and host J. Keith van
Straaten (formerly of Comedy Central’s “Beat the Geeks”), the show faithfully
follows the TV format: A panel of four B-list-ish luminaries are presented with
a civilian whose unusual occupation they must guess via yes-or-no questions,....more
The Set Up
Review by Ethan Kanfer
With its familiar subject matter —
singletons and their meddling, married friends — The Set Up could easily descend into sitcom-style predictability.
Thanks to an engaging cast and James Lindenberg’s smart, sensitive script, the
evening steers clear of clichés and seamlessly blends farce with psychological
realism. What emerges is a painfully funny take on the dance of intimacy — and
the bruised toes that result from its awkwardness.....more