‘Nerds’: A high-tech musical (1st review)

Revenge of the geeks

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as nerds and then moguls really did change the world, and now we all have to “turn off our cell phones” when we go to see a musical comedy about how this state of affairs came about.

Naomi Orwin

Dec 07, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Lydia Diamond’s ‘Stick Fly’ at the Arden

Guess who’s coming to dinner, with a twist

When two adult sons introduce their girlfriends to their parents on the same weekend, sibling rivalries flare, class distinctions divide and family secrets unravel. It’s a familiar story with a unique difference: This family is rich, well educated and black.

Steve Cohen

Dec 03, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Brecht’s ‘Good Person of Szechwan’ at the Public Theater

A truly good life: My generation and yours

This irreverent, kitschy, politically incorrect version of Brecht’s cynical parable made me squirm. But my playwriting students loved it. Brecht probably would have loved it, too.

Carol Rocamora

Dec 03, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

‘Hands Across Veronica’ at Walking Fish

Body image: The way we live now

Gin Hobbs’s Hands Across Veronica is a dark comedy that uses a tragic format to describe the way we live now: obsessed with image, and bereft of self.

Robert Zaller

Dec 02, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘Richard III’ in New York

Boys will be girls (again)

Everything about these two current productions— presented just as they were 400 years ago— is wonderful. You rarely hear Shakespeare’s poetry spoken so beautifully and clearly on the stage.

Carol Rocamora

Nov 26, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Bruce Norris’s ‘Domesticated’ in New York

Pity the poor philandering husband

Using Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Wiener as his prototypes, Bruce Norris’s blistering black comedy tells the story of a politician caught in a humiliating public sex scandal and beset by angry women. If only the protagonist’s anguished cry sounded more like his own and less like Philip Roth’s or Woody Allen’s.

Carol Rocamora

Nov 17, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

‘Enemy of the People’: The Berliner version

When the theater becomes a courtroom

The Schaubühne Theatre from Berlin is back, with a daring, defiant version of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People that sheds new light on a generation struggling to disengage itself from Germany’s catastrophic 20th-Century history.

Carol Rocamora

Nov 12, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

‘I Am My Own Wife’ in Norristown

A legend in her own mind (or his)

I Am My Own Wife concerns a German transvestite who survived both the Nazis and the Communists. But were his/her heroics genuine?

Steve Cohen

Nov 12, 2013 · Articles · 2 minute read

Harold Pinter's 'Betrayal' on Broadway

Tragedy or travesty?

What’s the point in watching a play with glamorous superstars like Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, if you’re not going to derive any pleasure from it?

Carol Rocamora

Nov 06, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

‘The Glass Menagerie’ in New York

A director who listens to his author

In John Tiffany’s tender production of The Glass Menagerie, the individual performances offer heartfelt interpretations of Tennessee Williams’s immortal characters. Cherry Jones may be the most formidable Amanda I’ve seen, while Zachary Quinto’s touching Tom is ironic to the point of tragicomedy.

Carol Rocamora

Nov 02, 2013 · Articles · 6 minute read