A Dolls House, Part 2, with Laurie Metcalf: Review, Pics

Laurie Metcalf is the fifteenth actress since 1889 to portray Nora Helmer on Broadway, the character in Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House” who slams the door on her husband and three children. But she is the first Nora to knock on that door 15 years later, in Lucas Hnath’s “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” a clever, surprisingly amusing and thought-provoking new play performed to winning effect by a quartet of first-rate actors: Besides Metcalf, they are Chris Cooper as Nora’s husband Torvald, Jayne Houdyshell as her former nanny Anne Marie, and Condola Rashad as her now grown-up daughter Emmy….A modest theatrical piece, …Hnath’s play is basically just five two-character scenes that run a total of 90 minutes without an intermission…But the simplicity of A Doll’s House, Part 2 is deceptive…

Full review on DC Theatre Scene

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laurie Metcalf, Chris Cooper and Jane Houdyshell

Laurie Metcalf and Jayne Houdyshell

Laurie Metcalf (in background) and Condola Rashad

Laurie Metcal, Jayne Houdyshell, Condola Rashad, Chris Cooper in A Doll’s House, Part 2

Anastasia on Broadway: Review, Video, Photographs

In dramatizing the legend surrounding the youngest daughter of the last Czar, the show has created a new villain, a Soviet official named Gleb….Anastasia winds up promoting nostalgia for the last reign of the Romanovs, those elegantly attired autocrats who sponsored pogroms against the Jews and violently suppressed popular Russian calls for democracy.
..the real strength of this production – its beautiful design and its wonderful cast…Given the pleasures in this escapist fare largely geared to children, few parents will probably care that we have to endure lines like “Anya survived for a reason: to heal what happened or Russia will be a wound that never heals.”

Full review on DC Theatre Scene

Tickets to Anastasia

Click on any photograph by Matthew Murphy to see it enlarged

Indecent on Broadway: Review, pics, video

There are many reasons to find deep satisfaction in the arrival on Broadway of the play “Indecent,” a fascinating tale wondrously staged about a century-old Jewish drama that featured a scandalizing kiss between two women, whose Broadway cast was prosecuted for obscenity.
It marks the long-delayed Broadway debut of Paula Vogel, who at 65 is one of the theatre community’s most admired playwrights…”Indecent” is also something of a homecoming and even vindication for “God of Vengeance”…”Indecent” is further proof that a play can explore a range of frighteningly relevant issues – threats to the arts and an entire culture, anti-immigrant bigotry, homophobia, even genocide – and do so in a production that is not only enlightening, and moving, but entertaining.

Full review on DC Theatre Scene

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(l-r): Katrina Lenk as ‘Manke,’ Adina Verson as ‘Rivkele’ in INDECENT,

Photograph from the Off-Broadway production.

(l-r): Max Gordon Moore as Sholem Asch and Adina Verson as Madje Asch in INDECENT,

(l-r): Max Gordon Moore as Sholem Asch and Richard Topol as Lemml in INDECENT,

(l-r): Max Gordon Moore as Eugene O’Neill, Richard Topol as Lemml in INDECENT,

(l-r): Adina Verson and Katrina Lenk in INDECENT,

(l-r): Aaron Halva (with accordion), Matt Darriau (with clarinet), Lisa Gutkin (with violin) and company in INDECENT,

(l-r): Richard Topol, Mimi Lieber, Tom Nelis, Adina Verson, Katrina Lenk, Steven Rattazzi and Max Gordon Moore, the company of INDECENT,

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The Play That Goes Wrong: Review, Pics

Before the play-within-the-play begins, its director apologizes for “the box office mix-up,” expressing hope that “the 617 of you affected will enjoy our little murder mystery just as much as you would have enjoyed Hamilton.” That’s the most sophisticated joke – indeed one of the few verbal ones — in this silly slapstick backstage farce that has improbably opened on Broadway.
Audiences may indeed enjoy The Play That Goes Wrong….if not as much as Hamilton, perhaps, surely as much as Noises Off, which it resembles, minus the plates of sardines nor anything approaching that play’s cleverness. And I say this having called Noises Off, when it had its second Broadway revival last year, little more than The Three Stooges with a British accent.

Click on any photograph by Jeremy Daniel to see it enlarged.

David Hearn and Charlie Russell

Jonathan Sayer, Greg Tannahill (on chaise lounge), Henry Lewis, David Hearn and Charlie Russell

Henry Shields, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Lewis, the three cast members of “The Play That Goes Wrong” who are credited as its authors.

Full review on DC Theatre Scene 

Miss Saigon: Review, pics

The first Broadway revival of Miss Saigon is being marketed as the return of a classic. But, if the show has become an undeniable fan favorite, the production’s impressive visual spectacle, lively staging and crowd-pleasing vocal calisthenics cannot completely mask a script that leans heavily on emotional manipulation and one-dimensional storytelling.

Full review in DC Theatre Scene

Click on any photograph by Matthew Murphy or Michael Le Poer Trench to see it enlarged.

Eva Noblezada and Samuel Li Weintraub

Eva Noblezada

Jon Jon Briones as The Engineer

Jon Jon Briones