The Best New York Theater of 2017 (So Far)
It’s been a busy, diverse spring both on Broadway and off, with a bumper crop of headturning musicals and ambitious plays. Here’s our picks for the best of the year so far, as chosen by Variety’s New…
Marilyn Stasio
Broadway Review: ‘1984’ Starring Olivia Wilde
The management of “1984,” the lauded West End import playing at Broadway’s Hudson Theater, felt it necessary to ban children under 13 from the stage production adapted by co-directors Robert Icke and…
Off Broadway Review: ‘Bella: An American Tall Tale’
Kirsten Childs’ high spirits are infectious. “Bella: An American Tall Tale,” a musical folk tale having its premiere at Playwrights Horizons, is her irresistible invitation to kick up your heels. Set…
Theater Review: Trump-Like ‘Julius Caesar’
Brutus is a commanding figure in the Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park production of “Julius Caesar.” The wily Mark Antony also looms large. But the most fearsome character in the show…
Off Broadway Review: ‘Cost of Living’
“Cost of Living” is a bittersweet play by Martyna Majok about people who need other people to survive — some of them quite literally. It’s also about people who absolutely refuse all help, even if…
Off Broadway Review: Matthew Perry’s ‘The End of Longing’
Psychodrama was a fun fad back in the over-sharing era of the 1970s. Well, now therapeutic theater is back, raised from the dead by onetime “Friends” fave Matthew Perry, who wrote and stars in “The…
Off Broadway Review: ‘Can You Forgive Her?’ With Amber Tamblyn
“Can You Forgive Her?,” a whimsical piece of work by Gina Gionfriddo (“Becky Shaw,” “Rapture, Blister, Burn”), looks like a play, talks like a play, and seems to want to be a play. But for all its…
Off Broadway Review: ‘The Whirligig’ With Zosia Mamet
Writer-actor Hamish Linklater’s new play “The Whirligig,” expressionistic in form and melancholy in tone, examines the whirling emotions of the friends and family who are keeping the deathwatch on a…
Off Broadway Review: ‘Pacific Overtures’ Starring George Takei
Director John Doyle is such a wizard, he could probably stage a show on a postage stamp. The stage at Classic Stage Company is larger than that — as reconfigured for this Off Broadway house, the…
Broadway Review: ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2,’ With Laurie Metcalf and Chris Cooper
So, did Godot ever show up? Were George and Martha able to save their marriage? And whatever happened to Nora after she slammed the door? In “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” Lucas Hnath pulls off the…
Broadway Review: Allison Janney in ‘Six Degrees of Separation’
Despite the vitalizing presence of Allison Janney in director Trip Cullman's elegant revival, "Six Degrees of Separation" lacks the comic bite of the original production. In its time, John Guare's…
