ScheckOnTheater

As he’s demonstrated in such films as Shine and the recent Broadway production of Ionesco’s Exit the King, there are few actors as adept at playing crazy characters as Geoffrey Rush. Now starring in the titular role in The Diary of a Madman, the performe… more »

Everybody has a story, but some are more interesting than others. So you take your chances with Zach Helm’s Interviewing the Audience, currently at the Vineyard Theatre. Based on a concept created by the late Spalding Gray, this theater piece is akin to… more »

Few playwrights have covered a particular social milieu as exhaustively and effectively as A.R. Gurney. For decades now, he has been steadily producing comedies dealing with the social mores of the WASP set, with often sublime results (The Dining Room, T… more »

For all their staying power over the years, the plays of Anton Chekhov are remarkably fragile works in performance. It’s so rare that all the elements come together--that all of the performers work in synch, that the directorial tone is cohesive—that mor… more »

If the title of Rajiv Joseph’s new play Gruesome Playground Injuries isn’t off-putting enough, what transpires onstage certainly is. This dark comedy about two friends who compare the all-too-visible scars from various physical traumas over the course of… more »

It’s easy to see why Matthew Lopez’s play The Whipping Man has enjoyed considerable success on the regional theater circuit. Set during the final days of the Civil War and concerning an impromptu Passover Seder conducted by a pair of black slaves and the… more »

Tennessee Williams’ 1963 play The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore has defied success in all its previous incarnations. It flopped on Broadway not once but twice and the 1968 film adaptation—retitled Boom and starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Bur… more »

Two current revivals of vintage plays, one American and one British, demonstrate that not every forgotten drama from the past is necessarily worth excavating. Both the Mint Theater Company’s revival of Arnold Bennett’s 1909 What the Public Wants and the… more »

It’s such a welcome pleasure to once again hear poet Richard Wilbur’s gorgeously elegant verse translation of The Misanthrope that one can almost, but not quite, overlook the general blandness of the Pearl Theatre Company’s revival. While Moliere’s 17th… more »