AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

New York Times

An Eccentric Existence: Ice Cream, Beer and Art
The reclusive life of an American eccentric is examined in scrupulous, sometimes strange detail in this exquisitely designed but conceptually thin puppet-theater work.

Gothamist

Opinionist: Disfarmer
Reclusive portrait photographer Mike Disfarmer (1917-1956) believed he was a foundling dropped on his parents' property by a tornado, and as an adult he legally changed his name from Meyer to Disfarmer to disassociate himself from his small-town Arkansas milieu ...

Variety

Review: Disfarmer
As beautiful and precise as a model railroad, Dan Hurlin's lush "Disfarmer" fills the stage with all the tiny, heartbreaking miracles that make up the lonely life of his puppet hero.

TheaterMania

Review: Disfarmer
Dan Hurlin has crafted a beautifully evocative puppet-theater piece about photographer Mike Disfarmer.

 

Updated February 2, 2009

Edge New York

Review: Cornbury: The Queen’s Governor
As one of history’s most notorious cross-dressers, the royal governor of New York presents a potentially fascinating subject for ’queer theater,’ but not playing it for laughs as is done here.

Updated January 30, 2009

New York Times

The Man Who Would Be Queen
If you had imagined that the follies of governors were a feature exclusive to the new century, this rambling comic romp will set you straight. Well, perhaps straight isn’t the word.

nytheatre.com

Review: Cornbury: The Queen's Governor

AmericanTheaterWeb

Review - Cornbury: The Queen's Governor - History Served Unevenly

CurtainUp

Review: Cornbury: The Queen's Governor
Eliot Spitzer and Rod R. Blagojevich certainly aren't the first American Governors whose behavior shocked their constituents. Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury who became the third English Royal Governor in 1702, liked dressing up in elaborate gowns and wigs

TheaterMania

Review: Cornbury: The Queen's Governor
Theatre Askew presents an uneven production of William M. Hoffman and Anthony Holland's play about the cross-dressing colonial governor.

Variety

Review: Cornbury: The Queen's Governor
We could stand the wolf hunting, the senate seat selling and the prostitute traffic, but "Cornbury: The Queen's Governor" has gone too far with its portrayal of gubernatorial cross-dressing.

Back Stage

Cornbury: The Queen's Governor reviewed by Leonard Jacobs [critics pick]
As he minces, flounces, and flits, watching David Greenspan as Edward Hyde is a trés gay fey treat.

Travalanche

Cornbury
...Imagine my delight when I heard that two of my favorite actors, David Greenspan and Everett Quinton, would be starring in Cornbury: The Queen’s Governor, a Ridiculous style play about Cornbury’s alleged antics.

 

Updates for February 2, 2009

New York Magazine

Brown, Zacharek on American Plan, Hedda Gabler

Edge New York

Review: The American Plan
"The American Plan" is a 1960s look at dreamy ambition remade by a 21st-Century cynical eye.

Updates for January 30, 2009

Time Out New York

Review: The American Plan
Richard Greenberg's witty, wistful 1990 play examines the American self in transition.

nypress

Planned Parenthood
In a Greenberg revival, Ruehl rules and Rabe is rued

BroadwayWorld.com

* Broadway Blog - The American Plan: Look to the Lilies

Village Voice

In BAM's Cherry Orchard and MTC's American Plan, Mixed Emotions Produce Mixed Results by Michael Feingold

DC Theatre Scene

NY Reviews: The American Plan and Leaves of Glass

CurtainUp

Review: The American Plan
Richard Greenberg's 1990 play still sparkles with wit that's buoyed by the effervescent Lily Rabe and the magnificent Mercedes Ruehl . . .

Philadelphia Inquirer

Ruehl is riveting in ‘The American Plan’
As soon as the dynamic actress Mercedes Ruehl shows her face in the Broadway revival of The American Plan, you just know that her character will be ruinous.

Bloomberg.com

Bloomberg.com

Greenberg's Catskills Caper Mixes Romance, Mystery, Gluttony: John Simon
Richard Greenberg’s “The American Plan” -- a comedy that takes itself very seriously -- is getting a questionable Broadway revival by the Manhattan Theatre Club. Perhaps casting Mercedes Ruehl, with her excellent German accent, and Lily Rabe, for her parentage, had something to do with it.

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TheaterMania

Review: The American Plan reviewed by Andy Propst
Mercedes Ruehl gives a masterful performance in MTC's excellent revival of Richard Greenberg's complex play about a mother and daughter in the 1960s.

New York Times

Rapunzel in the Catskills
Richard Greenberg’s elegant and incisive play has been given the revival it deserves by the Manhattan Theater Club.

New York Daily News

Cast shines in 'American Plan'
This second-act revelation is a welcome jolt to Richard Greenberg’s thoughtful but slow-moving play, which begins like a slight romantic comedy. But like its five characters, who aren’t easy to read, "The American Plan" has more serious intentions.

amNY

Theater Review of The American Plan
Fifty years ago, “The American Plan” referred to an all-meals-inclusive package at summer resorts in the Catskills. Though Richard Greenberg’s 1990 drama takes place right outside such a resort in 1960, its title is really meant to refer to his characters’ desire to fit into American society despite cultural differences.

Newsday

'American Plan' for thwarting love
Watching "The American Plan" is a bit like reading a mysterious short story about people you don't quite believe, though you still need to know what happens to them.

New York Post

Lake's anything but placid
Seeing it's set in the Catskills in the sum mer of 1960, you might suspect "The American Plan" of being another "Dirty...

ny1

NY1 Theater Review: "The American Plan"
"The American Plan" is a peculiar little play that attempts to explore the underside of our impulses in a world beyond our control.

Hartford Courant

Mother And Daughter Adversaries In 'The American Plan'

Bergen Record

Love entanglements in the long-ago Catskills

Associated Press

A Tangled Triangle Unravels in 'The American Plan'
A mentally fragile young woman; her wily, protective mother; a handsome interloper -- sounds like the ingredients for a budding romance, sort of a variation on ''The Light in the Piazza,'' which features a similar triangle. But playwright Richard Greenberg has something more melancholy in mind with his intertwining of the three main characters in ''The American Plan,'' now being thoughtfully revived on Broadway.

Wall Street Journal

Where's Guare? Way Out West
In California, John Guare's revival of "Six Degrees of Separation" is one of the strongest American plays of the postwar era. [Also reviewed: 'Rich and Famous' and 'The American Plan']

Financial Times

The American Plan, Friedman Theatre, New York
Richard Greenberg’s play evokes postwar, pre-hippie America without a whiff of retro chic, writes Brendan Lemon

USA Today

'The American Plan': A brilliant blueprint
At the dawn of the 1960s, a girl on the cusp of womanhood finds romance in the Catskills with a handsome stranger.

Variety

Review: The American Plan
The simple, sturdy wood frame around Jonathan Fensom's set for "The American Plan" looks like it might belong on a Norman Rockwell painting. But in Richard Greenberg's quietly melancholy 1990 play that standardized perception of American life turns out to be an uncomfortable trap for all five characters.

The Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: The American Plan
Bottom Line: Social and emotional themes mesh uneasily in this intriguing but flawed drama.

Back Stage

The American Plan reviewed by David Sheward [critic's pick]
My first reaction to the news of Manhattan Theatre Club's revival of Richard Greenberg's 1990 The American Plan was "Why?"

Talkin' Broadway

Review: The American Plan
Just how pretty are you willing to accept your ugliness? In his velvety revival of Richard Greenberg’s cautiously cutting play The American Plan, which Manhattan Theatre Club has just opened at the Samuel J. Friedman, director David Grindley has wrapped a tangle of ravaged dreams, broken souls, and self-reproducing falsehoods within half a dozen or so sparkling packages. As the ribbons fall away, masses of personal and societal pain escape to wreak havoc, but never lose sight of their silvery provenance as gifts worth receiving. . . .

 

The Guardian

Entertaining Mr Sloane, Trafalgar Studios, London
I've never before seen a version of this play that pushed its comedy and violence to such limits, says Michael Billington

Daily Telegraph

Entertaining Mr Sloane at Trafalgar Studios, review
Matthew Horne reveals a darker side in this wild, witty and heartless performance of Entertaining Mr Sloane.

Whatsonstage.com

Review: Entertaining Mr Sloane
Triumphantly claiming the role of Kath in Entertaining Mr Sloane from Alison Steadman, who played it in a beehive hair-do and at full throttle eight years ago, Imelda Staunton conveys as much sex-starved pathos as suburban desperation, suddenly c...

London Theatre Guide

First Night Feature: Entertaining Mr Sloane
There can’t be many scenes involving crumpet-toasting in the canon of British theatre. But, judging by the one in Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane, there should be more of them. It is just one comic highlight in Nick Bagnall’s production which mines Orton’s black comedy to the hilt