THE HANGOVER REPORT – Brett Dean’s faithful, visceral operatic adaptation of HAMLET sonically unleashes the existential depths of the Bard’s text

Last week, I was able to catch up with the New York premiere of composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn’s visceral operatic adaptation of Hamlet at the Metropolitan Opera. … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Mary Wiseman turns in a star-making performance in AT THE WEDDING, Bryna Turner’s slight but emotionally bruised new comedy

This past week, I attended a performance of Lincoln Center Theater’s Off-Broadway production of Bryna Turner’s new play At the Wedding. The comedy (which I thankfully caught before it concluded … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Karen Hartman’s sturdy, cleverly-framed new drama THE LUCKY STAR affectingly excavates one family’s elusive history

This week at Theater A at 59E59 Theaters, I caught Karen Hartman’s The Lucky Star. The play dramatizes Richard Hollander’s book Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family’s Correspondence from … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Ebru Nihan Celkan’s fractured two-hander WILL YOU COME WITH ME? gets lost in translation

Earlier this week, I trekked to Gowanus in Brooklyn to catch the opening night performance of Turkish playwright Ebru Nihan Celkan’s Will You Come with Me? at MITU580. The new … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The breezy new musical ROMEO & BERNADETTE is an amusingly incongruous love letter to Shakespeare and Brooklyn

Last night, Mark Saltzman’s Romeo & Bernadette: A Musical Tale of Verona & Brooklyn opened Off-Broadway at Theater 555. The current run marks the return to New York of the … Continue Reading →

VIEWPOINTS – To leave or not to leave: Notions of home and identity explored in Mona Monsour’s THE VAGRANT TRILOGY Sanaz Toossi’s WISH YOU WERE HERE

This past weekend, I attended two thought-provoking new plays – Mona Monsour’s The Vagrant Trilogy and Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here – that explored notions of home and identity … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The astonishing Dylan & McPherson musical GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY returns to Broadway for a limited time

Last week, I had a chance to return to Bob Dylan and Conor McPherson’s astonishing musical Girl from the North Country, which returns to the Belasco Theatre for a limited … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The ageless Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse return to Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE

This past week at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, I caught Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway revival of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive starring the ageless and ever-distinctive Mary-Louise … Continue Reading →

VIEWPOINTS – Funny women defiantly speaking their truths: Hannah Gadsby in BODY OF WORK and Alison Leiby in OH GOD, A SHOW ABOUT ABORTION

At its best, stand-up comedy can be as affecting as any medium out there. Case in point – this week, I had the pleasure of taking in two of shows … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – After all these years, Elizabeth Swados’s quirky and compact NIGHTCLUB CANTATA remains a visceral and theatrically charged experience

Earlier this week at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre, I had a chance to catch up with a rare revival of Elizabeth Swados’s Nightclub Cantata. Ms. Swados (who sadly passed … Continue Reading →