AUTO Visits NEWS » Items by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Theater Review | 'Women Beware Women': Lovestruck Romantics, the World Is Cutthroat

Posted: December 16th, 2008, 6:06am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Thomas Middleton’s sizzling brew of adultery, incest and murder has been spruced up, juiced up and set scampering across the stage by the Red Bull Theater.

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Billy’s Gotta Dance. Does He Gotta Fly?

Posted: December 10th, 2008, 5:19pm GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

When the title character in “Billy Elliot” soars, the show takes a dive.

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Theater Review | 'Home': A Cast of 3 Populates the South in ‘Home’

Posted: December 9th, 2008, 4:47am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

The revival of Samm-Art Williams’s play “Home” moves in tune with the easy rhythms of the writing.

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Theater Review | 'Slava’s Snowshow': When They Send in These Clowns, Every Day Is a Snow Day

Posted: December 8th, 2008, 8:29am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

If I were charged with the entertainment of children under 10 and had a Broadway budget at my disposal, this would be the show I’d favor.

Theater Review | 'On the Town': Drop Me Off at Broadway, 1944

Posted: November 21st, 2008, 4:41am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

The fleet’s in this weekend, at least on 55th Street, where a radiant production of “On the Town” has docked at City Center through Sunday.

Theater Review: Peanuts, Cracker Jack and Some Illegal Juice

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 5:37am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

“Back Back Back,” a new play by Itamar Moses about baseball’s steroids scandal, could actually use a little juicing itself.

Theater Review | 'Streamers': Banter in the Barracks Takes a Serious Turn

Posted: November 12th, 2008, 5:44am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

The theater’s heavy reliance on revivals sometimes feels like a steady diet of disillusionment. Not so with the revival of “Streamers.”

Theater Review: Journalist in Asylum Lacks Exit Strategy

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 8:23am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

With “Mindgame,” Ken Russell, the British film director, and Keith Carradine, the economical movie actor, attempt to resuscitate a moribund stage genre, the psychological thriller.

Theater Review | 'Woyzeck': Outfitting Woyzeck With a Pair of Rose-Colored Glasses

Posted: October 17th, 2008, 3:50am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

This new adaptation of Georg Büchner’s landmark drama “Woyzeck” is playful but utterly inane.

Theater Review | 'A Body of Water': Waking Up Without Your Memories Can Put a Damper on Your Day

Posted: October 15th, 2008, 4:23am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Lee Blessing’s “A Body of Water” is a sputtering drama about a man and a woman who wake up one day with matching cases of amnesia.

Theater Review | Chekhov Lizardbrain: For a Solitary Soul, Memories Are Raucous Company

Posted: October 11th, 2008, 4:17am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

“Chekhov Lizardbrain,” at the Ohio Theater through Oct. 19, is a peculiar, hypnotic and unexpectedly moving new show from Philadelphia’s venturesome Pig Iron Theater Company.

Theater: Gloom (and Rain) Set Tone for Plays at Festival

Posted: August 30th, 2008, 9:08am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

The British writers presenting work this year at the Traverse Theater, the locus of much of the most ambitious playwriting at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, were in a gloomy frame of mind.

Antsy Adolescents Romp at Edinburgh Festivals

Posted: August 25th, 2008, 9:27am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Significant shows at the Edinburgh International Festival and the Festival Fringe considered the anxieties and preoccupations of contemporary youth.

Singing! Dancing! Adapting! Stumbling!

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 3:15am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Every few years, with depressing regularity, a hit Broadway musical makes the leap to the big screen and goes splat! Or thud. Or zzzzz.

Theater Review | 'Some Americans Abroad': This Blessed Plot, Those Incurable Anglophiles

Posted: July 25th, 2008, 4:13am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Only frantically Anglophile theatergoers are likely to derive much joy from this limp two hours of high-toned cultural tourism.

Theater Review | 'I'll Go On': Linguistic Somersaults Through Beckettian Pastures

Posted: July 21st, 2008, 3:36am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

“I’ll Go On” is a lively tramp through the vast, thorny pastures of Samuel Beckett’s prose.

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Theater Review | 'Eh Joe': Words Fail Him, but Memories Can’t Be Silenced

Posted: July 19th, 2008, 4:27am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Although it lasts just half an hour, this staging of a Beckett piece is one of the most wholly satisfying nights I’ve spent at the theater this year.

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Theater Review | ‘The Marriage of Bette and Boo’: Do You, Bette, Take Boo for a Life of Misery That We’ll Laugh At?

Posted: July 14th, 2008, 4:12am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

This uneven revival succeeds better at milking the play’s broad laughs than acknowledging the rich seams of anguish that feed them.

Theater Review | 'Superior Donuts': So, How Would You Like Your Culture Clash? Joke-Filled or Sugar-Glazed?

Posted: June 30th, 2008, 4:17am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Tracy Letts’s “August: Osage County” is a full theatrical meal. His new play, “Superior Donuts,” is a much less ambitious repast.

Theater Review: Vengeance Revisited, With Singing

Posted: May 31st, 2008, 4:28am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

The macabre and the misty-eyed vie uneasily for supremacy in “The Visit” at the Signature Theater in Arlington, Va.

Theater Review | 'Endgame': Loads of Grim Laughs Among the Garbage Cans

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 3:18am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

The new production of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame” is specifically grim but never merely glum.

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Theater Review | 'From Up Here': Have a Nice Day at School, Sweetie. Don’t Kill Anyone.

Posted: April 17th, 2008, 3:20am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

“From Up Here” has the bouncy humor of a quirky-family sitcom, but in this case the usual adolescent afflictions take a back seat to something larger, darker and more mysterious.

Theater Review | 'The Drunken City': Time to Sober Up, Bride-to-Be, and Smell the Coffee

Posted: March 27th, 2008, 5:24am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Three young women stagger through a fateful night on the town in Adam Bock’s flimsy but sweet comedy “The Drunken City.”

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Theater Review | 'The Poor Itch': Playwright’s Last Work on the Iraq War, With No End in Sight

Posted: March 20th, 2008, 3:18am GMT by By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Despite the admirable and intelligent work put into this production, “The Poor Itch” remains an unachieved play.