Zingers fly at Boscobel in polished ‘Love’s Labours Lost’ (Alex Adrian Johnson and Denise Cormier in “Love’s Labours Lost” at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, now in repertory with “Romeo and Juliet” and “The 39 Steps” through Labor Day weekend. Photo by William Marsh.) “Love’s Labours Lost” — now in a… Read More →
Star-crossed lovers find refuge from the pulsing Verona (Carl Howell and Angela Janas in the title roles of Hudson Valley Shakespeare’s production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Photo by William Marsh.) It is the simplest of things, really: an entrance. But considering who is entering — Romeo — and when he’s… Read More →
“The 39 Steps” goes to summer camp — at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (Gabra Zackman and Richard Ercole in “The 39 Steps.” Photo by William Marsh.) Richard Hannay asked for it. In the first moments of “The 39 Steps,” now settled in for a high-energy summer’s run in repertory at… Read More →
If the address 221B Baker St., London, means anything to you, word that “The Hound of the Baskervilles” is now on stage at Penguin Rep in Stony Point might prompt you to don your deerstalker hat and head to Crickettown Road, magnifying glass in hand. Baker Street, after all, is… Read More →
Reviewed by John P. McCarthy/For the Journal News “Hairspray,” the Tony-winning musical based on John Waters’ 1988 movie — which was then remade for the multiplex in 2007 — gets an enjoyable staging at Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford. Only a curmudgeon could fail to be won over by this… Read More →
“Talley’s Folly,” Lanford Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winner — now in a pitch-perfect production at Briarcliff’s Hudson Stage through May 12 — is achingly beautiful to watch. There is Matt Friedman, a Jewish accountant from St. Louis, the ultimate outsider here in Missouri in 1944, who has done his best to lose… Read More →
In “The Clearing” — Jake Jeppson’s play about siblings and secrets, now in a stunning premiere at Pleasantville’s Axial Theatre — the Ellis brothers couldn’t be less similar. Les Ellis is reserved, private; his brother, Chris, is physical, loud, emotional. Chris gobbles marshmallows; Les nibbles them. Les doesn’t care about… Read More →
For years, JP Miller’s “Days of Wine and Roses” — about a young couple in the grip of alcholism — might have been considered a period piece. The 1962 film, starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, helped to put a cork in the swinging ’50s by examining the impact of… Read More →
We are in a Gershwin moment. There’s the revival of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” on Broadway — starring Westchester’s Audra McDonald. At the end of the month, another Westchester resident, Kelli O’Hara, comes to Broadway’s Imperial Theatre in “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” opposite Matthew Broderick, a… Read More →
Three-and-a-half years ago, “The Fall to Earth” made its New York regional premiere at Stony Point’s Penguin Rep. It ended with a cliff-hanger, one so far out of left field that it had people questioning what they had just seen. That production, like the one running for just one more… Read More →
Love swirls around Leona Samish, the lonely American secretary in Arthur Laurents’ comedy “The Time of the Cuckoo” — in a nuanced, delightful production at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls. Love fills the courtyard of the charming Pensione Fioria, a lovely sun-dappled boarding house along a canal in Venice,... Read More →
“Taking Off,” Axial Theatre’s evening of original one-acts, involves two reclusive women of about the same age, set in two different eras. First, there’s Emily Dickinson, the aspiring poet, in Ward Riley’s “Feathers Sometimes Soar on the Breath of God.” She’s 39, unmarried, living with her sister, Lavinia, in her… Read More →
He’s the coach, call him Don. Never Donald. He’s the assistant coach, call him Michael. Not Mike. What’s in a name? Plenty. Richard Dresser’s witty play “Rounding Third” — the final production in the 34th season at Stony Point’s Penguin Rep, through Nov. 6 — is a study in contrasts.
Long before “American Idol,” Eliza Doolittle might have been one of the first reality stars. In George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” — and its musical adaptation, the magical “My Fair Lady,” now on stage at Westchester Broadway Theatre — Eliza signs up to better herself, knowing full well that it will… Read More →
Had the great good fortune to catch the Schoolhouse Theater’s revival of last season’s “Dancing at Lughnasa” yesterday in a deservedly packed theater in Croton Falls. Moments that will stay with me for a while: + The sweetness in Michael McMonagle’s voice as he plays the 7-year-old Michael.
It goes by an unwieldy title, but “Shipwrecked! An Entertainment: The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself)” is storytelling, pure and simple. See Donald Margulies’ spellbinder through the eyes of a seven-year-old and you’ll remember the bliss of suspended disbelief, when a man can don a… Read More →
“Altar Boyz” — the laugh-out-loud satire of Christian boy bands now on stage at Elmsford’s Westchester Broadway Theatre — has its tongue blissfully planted in its cheek. The book by Kevin Del Aguila and music and lyrics by Gary Adler and Michael Patrick Walker introduce us a boy band —... Read More →
The word had gone out that on that particular night — last Saturday — the world was about to end. So why were all these people laughing? They were at Penguin Rep in Stony Point, which kicked off its ambitious 34th season the way it has the past three seasons,... Read More →
Comedy is like a balloon that kids keep aloft by batting it into the air: If one kid doesn’t keep his end of the bargain, the game is over. At an uneven preview performance of the Schoolhouse Theater’s production of Neil Simon’s “Laughter on the 23rd Floor,” the balloon too… Read More →
In “Boston Marriage,” now in a spirited run at Briarcliff’s Hudson Stage Company, David Mamet shows he knows a lot of words, only some of which start with the letter “f.” The playwright — who works in profanity the way Manet worked in oil — packs the three-woman play with… Read More →
After a winter of weathery discontent, “Singin’ in the Rain” at Westchester Broadway Theatre does the unthinkable: It actually makes you wish it would rain one more time. Yes, it rains on the stage in Elmsford during the iconic title song, when silent-film star Don Lockwood (Jeremy Benton) flies high… Read More →
In real-estate parlance, Andrew Gerle’s play, “Renovations” — in its world premiere at White Plains Performing Arts Center through April 3 — has good bones. Based on John Marchese’s book “Renovations: A Father and Son Rebuild a House and Rediscover Each Other,” it treads the universal ground of fathers and… Read More →
Brian Friel’s achingly lyrical memory play, “Dancing at Lughnasa” is set in that fateful August when the Mundy family of Ballybeg, Ireland, is enjoying, unwittingly, their last precious moments together. At the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls, director Pamela Moller Kareman has assembled a bumper crop of talent for this… Read More →
Forget the book club. This week, instead of gathering with your girlfriends to chat about Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” check out a woman who has the mothering tiger by the tail, in “The Passion of the Hausfrau” at White Plains Performing Arts Center. The clever one-woman… Read More →
If there’s a menorah in your window and a Christmas tree in your living room, has White Plains Performing Arts Center got a musical for you! Actually, “That Time of the Year” — the Christmas-Hanukkah-New Year’s musical now getting its Westchester premiere at the White Plains PAC — works just… Read More →
“King John,” one of Shakespeare’s rarely performed history plays, lacks some of the punch and fire of other more popular works in the canon. It doesn’t have the humped, snarling central character of “Richard III” — but it does have a usurper who clings to power amid political turmoil. It… Read More →
Bless him, Father, for he has sinned. And sinned. And sinned. Jack Grace is eager to confess his every petty crime and misdemeanor in James McLindon’s funny and fast “Salvation,” a black comedy in its world premiere at Briarcliff’s Hudson Stage Company. He might be a bit too eager to… Read More →
One of the most stirring moments in “Wallenberg” — the epic musical now in its world premiere at the White Plains Performing Arts Center — comes at the top of Act 2, when Budapest’s Jews are huddled on a railcar in late 1944, bound for certain death in a Nazi… Read More →
Pity the poor Prozorov girls, those long-suffering siblings at the center of Anton Chekhov’s classic drama, “Three Sisters.” Time and circumstance are not kind to them. Chekhov’s masterpiece gets a faithful, if at times academic, production from Purchase Repertory Theater at the PepsiCo Theater through Oct. 23. In an age… Read More →
There is good, evil and a little bad in “Jekyll & Hyde” at Westchester Broadway Theatre. Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 story has inspired countless adaptations on stage and film. The earnest Dr. Jekyll labors to find a cure for mental illness, to drive away the demons that have stricken his… Read More →
