NEW YORK — In 1911, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. That alone is a considerable achievement, especially for a woman, but Curie was actually doubling down: Seven years earlier, she, her husband, Pierre, and their colleague Henri Becquerel, had been honored by the Nobel committee for their discoveries in physics.
NEW YORK — The new play “Reparations” gets underway in an innocuous enough manner. Two strangers meet at a book party; they end up at her Upper East Side condo, where they chitchat with flirtatious casualness before retiring to the bedroom; in the morning, she makes them breakfast. Reg is young and black, with the relaxed assurance of a guy about to score. Ginny is white and older, and ready to start dating again seven months after her husband’s death — Reg barely flinches upon learning she’s...
NEW YORK — If you can’t stand my creative, manly heat, get out of my kitchen: This could be the unofficial motto of Harry, the temperamental chef at a tiny Brooklyn restaurant. But it’s OK for him to be a jerk because Harry — played by Raúl Esparza with knife-wielding, cocky charm — is not a cook, he is an artist.
NEW YORK — A goat is tethered to a cinder block by a rope tied to its neck. As audience members take their seats, the poor animal paces in a circle, bleating miserably. It is a heartbreaking sight. Eventually three men dressed in black appear and begin to dance; the goat panics as they get closer and closer, its cries becoming increasingly shrill.
NEW YORK — The title of Andy Bragen’s new autobiographical show, “Notes on My Mother’s Decline,” forecasts exactly what’s in store: It is just as collected, fatalistic and grief-stricken as you might expect. Perhaps those first two qualities, with their suggestion of emotional detachment, are what helped the playwright cope with the third. Or maybe that’s what Bragen (“This Is My Office,” “Don’t You _______ Say a Word”) would like us to think.
NEW YORK — You don’t need a single line of dialogue to feel the bone-deep malaise that pervades Conor McPherson’s “Dublin Carol”: The play’s set practically screams exhausted shabbiness, drenched in an orange-brown palette Pantone might call Tragic Rust — a monochromatic approach that is representative of the limited emotional landscape to follow.
NEW YORK — The folks at Theater Mitu did a lot of homework for their latest show, “House (or how to lose an orchard in 90 minutes or less)”: A “research bibliography” takes up three tightly spaced pages in the program.
NEW YORK — Kay, Lorraine and Amber share a stage but not a single conversation in Elaine Murphy’s “Little Gem.” Yet as the show goes on, it becomes increasingly obvious that the women, who represent three generations of a Dublin family, are very close. When one speaks, the others look on, sometimes silently reacting: a raised eyebrow here, pursed lips there. They may not directly speak to each other, but they do look out for each other.
NEW YORK — Michael R. Jackson — playwright, composer, lyricist and superfan — sang along to every single song at the recent Liz Phair concert in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. He even knew the obscure “Ant in Alaska.” He took photos and beamed, he offered learned asides about alternate lyrics. When Phair launched into “Divorce Song,” Jackson let out a piercing scream that may still be echoing in the wilds of Park Slope.
Attwell tries to conjure a mounting sense of doom through a fractured narrative: Confusion and awe turn into urgency and dread, then resignation and perhaps even acceptance as seven actors take turns playing various characters in brief, seemingly unconnected scenes.
(Critic’s Pick): NEW YORK — What are magic tricks if not a warping of reality? Skilled illusionists look like they are bending the laws of physics. What they actually do, of course, is make their audience believe — in a world where people can be sawed apart and put back together, where objects fall upward and mind-reading is possible.
One way we have not seen him, however, is as a lazy, gullible dumdum — which is how he is portrayed in Ishmael Reed’s show “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda,” currently at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
Fans of indie fare may also remember Winstead’s un-showy honesty as a recovering alcoholic and elementary schoolteacher in the drama “Smashed,” opposite Aaron Paul.
NEW YORK — Activists come in many guises. Trisha Lee, the sole character in the show “The Pink Unicorn,” certainly never imagined that one day she would be fighting for equal rights, or that she would defy her minister and stand against so many in their small Texas town.
(Critic's Pick): NEW YORK — Sean O’Casey’s 1926 play “The Plough and the Stars,” at the Irish Repertory Theater, starts off in such a jolly manner that you may think you’re in for a comedy about colorful working-class folks in a Dublin tenement. Most of the people we meet display a riotous gift of gab that indicates, if the accents hadn’t already given it away, that we are in Eire.
Ten authors get credit for the Ariana Grande hit “7 Rings,” though 90% of the songwriting royalties are going to just two of them — the long-dead Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose “My Favorite Things” inspired the new track.
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