AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

New York Times

The King, All Grown Up and Ready to Wage Battle
This solid if drab-looking staging of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” does not slice and dice the text to make it more palatable for young audiences.

Variety

Review: Henry V
This stripped-down staging of Shakespeare's popular history succeeds in odd places. In director Davis McCallum's hands, the most wonderful scene in "Henry V" isn't the St. Crispin's Day speech -- drowned in lousy blocking -- but the seduction of princess Katherine by the heroic Harry.

TheaterMania

Review: Henry V
Matthew Amendt makes a memorable impression in the title role of Shakespeare's drama.

New York Post

A bang-up take on the Bard
You couldn't ask for a better introduction to Shakespeare than the New Victory Theater's new "Henry V." Geared for kids 12 and up, this joint production by the great Guthrie Theater and The Acting Company is a nice change of pace from the New Vic's recent run of acrobats and hip-hop artists. Few concessions are made to...

 

New York Times

Take My Life, Please: The Indian Version
This affable one-man show doesn’t belittle or romanticize, but it still seems as formulaic as any Hollywood movie

New York Post

Going native in a big city
Confessional monologues are a dime a dozen these days, but Darrell Dennis' one-man show has an undeniable hook: This semi-autobiographical tale of a young man's transition from reservation to the city amusingly counters our stereotypical notions of Indian life. In "Tales of an Urban Indian," now receiving an extended run at...

Associated Press

'Urban Indian' Explores Beyond the Reservation
In the opening scene of ''Tales of an Urban Indian,'' Darrell Dennis' semi-autobiographical one-man play about his struggles with substance abuse and his identity as a Canadian Indian, Dennis explains his reason for writing it.

Back Stage

Tales of an Urban Indian reviewed by Ron Cohen
The storytelling is laced with abundant and welcome humor, but occasionally the script sounds like standup comedy, lending an out-of-place glibness to the work.

TheaterMania

Review: Tales of an Urban Indian
Darrell Dennis' solo show attempts to counteract stereotypes, but still resorts to the use of too many clichés.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Tales of an Urban Indian
Putting on a one-man show that must not only carry the weight for a people largely underrepresented in the American theatre, but also support and refute stereotypes of that group and present its sole representative in a less-than-flattering way would terrify anyone. . . .

 

Updates for March 3, 2009:

Time Out New York

Review: Our Town
Director David Cromer reawakens a great American play.

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First Night Reviews:

AmericanTheaterWeb

Review: Our Town
Rediscovering a Classic

New York Times

21st-Century Grover’s Corners, With the Audience as Neighbors
David Cromer has directed a wonderfully intimate, highly rewarding production of “Our Town.”

New York Daily News

It's a 'Our Town' without pity
Thornton Wilder's classic "Our Town" is performed without much scenery while an actor playing the Stage Manager becomes the audience's guide.

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of Our Town
It’s a shame that most of us know Thornton Wilder’s 1938 drama “Our Town” only from bad amateur productions. (I speak from experience. When I was 16, I played Dr. Gibbs in an awful production in a high school cafeteria.)

New York Post

It's our kind of 'Town'
The bucolic New England hamlet of Grover's Corners has never looked quite as forbidding as it does in the revival of "Our...

Associated Press

An Intimate, Yet Unsentimental 'Our Town' Scores
Forget about excessive folksiness. It's pretty much gone.

Wall Street Journal

The Genius of David Cromer
In a re-imagining of the classic play "Our Town," director David Cromer creates a performance that doesn't feel like a performance at all.

Bloomberg.com

Foolproof `Our Town' Crumbles Under Cromer's Urban Renewal: John Simon
If ever there was a foolproof American play, it is Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” I have seen professional and amateur productions, college and high-school performances, movie and opera versions, and all, even the poorest, had some kernel of good in them. But not even “Our Town” is David Cromer-proof.

Financial Times

Our Town, Barrow Street Theatre, New York
Though neither a novel nor a daring production, this classic has lost none of its poignancy, writes Brendan Lemon

Variety

Review: Our Town
Helmer David Cromer takes a hatchet to 70 years of saccharine productions of "Our Town" by deconstructing Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1938 masterpiece half to death.

Back Stage

Our Town reviewed by Adam R. Perlman
Has a show ever come to New York based on the heavenly smell of bacon?

TheaterMania

Review: Our Town
David Cromer's beautiful staging of Thornton Wilder's play literally brings the audience into the experience.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Our Town
You may not hear the earth crack over the echoes of your palpitating heart or see decades of artifice dissolve through your tears, but you’ll still feel them washing you away. David Cromer’s magnificent production of Our Town

nytheatre.com

Review: Our Town
David Cromer's new production of Our Town has just opened at Barrow Street Theatre. Our reviewer Martin Denton says the show has a cumulative power that is unmatched by anything currently on stage in NYC.

CurtainUp

Review: Our Town
I think Paul Newman whose last Broadway performance was as the Stage Manager, would love and appreciate David Cromer's unfussy, intimate production.

 

Additions for March 3, 2009

Time Out New York

Review: Guys and Dolls
Luck is not a lady with this ill-cast revival of the classic tuner.

Enertainment Weekly

Review: Guys and Dolls
The trouble with Jersey Boys director Des McAnuff's Broadway revival is that too often it plays like a very good community theater production, albeit one with considerably pricier sets.

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First Night Reviews

New York Times

It’s a Cinch That the Bum Is Under the Thumb of Some Little Broad
The uninspired new revival of “Guys and Dolls” provides a valuable lesson in the importance of chemistry by demonstrating what can happen without it.

New York Daily News

'Guys and Dolls' tries and falls
"Take back your mink, take back your pearls," fumes the fed-up fiancée Adelaide in "Guys and Dolls." Des McAnuff, who directed the flatfooted new Broadway...

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of Guys and Dolls
You know that a production of “Guys and Dolls” has gone terribly wrong when a minor character like General Cartwright makes a bigger impression than Sky Masterson, Sarah Brown, Nathan Detroit and Miss Adelaide put together. And if anyone is to blame, it is director Des McAnuff (“Jersey Boys”), whose new Broadway revival is a misconceived fiasco.

Newsday

Theater review: Guys and Dolls
In the crapshoot called Broadway, "Guys and Dolls" is as close as the theater gets to a sure thing. Or at least it seemed that way until Des McAnuff's tarted-up and dumbed-down revival opened last night at the handsomely remodeled Nederlander Theatre.

New York Post

This revival is a bad bet
'Guys & Dolls' bores in B'way return

ny1

NY1 Theater Review: "Guys And Dolls"
...Talent notwithstanding, and there is a lot of it, this "Guys and Dolls" is so leaden and uninspired, it might as well be called "Men and Women...

Hartford Courant

New York Stage: Revival of 'Guys and Dolls' Recalls Damon Runyon's New York
It's a joy ride back to the '50s with the splashy, jam-packed revival of "Guys and Dolls."

Bergen Record

Feldberg: 'Guys and Dolls' review
...a joyless perversion of the buoyant 1950 musical.

Associated Press

A Disappointing 'Guys and Dolls' Hits Times Square
Nicely-Nicely Johnson. Harry the Horse. Liver Lips Louie. Brandy Bottle Bates. Benny Southstreet. Scranton Slim. Big Jule. Not to mention the Hot Box girls and the folks at Save-A-Soul Mission. What have they done to you colorful characters?.

Bloomberg.com

`Guys and Dolls' Returns to Broadway With Spectacular Crap Game: Review Well into the second act of the high-voltage Broadway revival of “‘Guys and Dolls,” something exhilarating happens onstage. It’s just a game of craps set in the sewers beneath Times Square, but it’s magic.

USA Today

'Guys and Dolls' Broadway revival isn't exactly a sure bet
Imagine having dinner in a fabulous restaurant with two couples. One pair is delightfully witty and has sizzling chemistry; the other two seem so awkward that it's almost painful to be with them. ...

Variety

Review: Guys and Dolls
...Fronted by four likable leads whose collective charisma never rises above medium wattage, the production sucks the personality out of an American musical-theater classic. The consolation is that even in this misconceived presentation, the show itself is too good not to be at least minimally entertaining.

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: Guys and Dolls
Bottom Line: The show's still great, but this "Guys and Dolls" should have been a whole lot better.

Back Stage

Guys and Dolls reviewed by Adam R. Perlman
Did someone forget to baptize Guys and Dolls? Seems unlikely — but how else to explain why a nigh-perfect musical entertainment has been plunged into limbo, suspended between cartoon and noir in director Des McAnuff's appalling revival.

TheaterMania

Peter Filichia's Diary: Runyon Doesn't Land
I’m a little surprised by Des McAnuff.

Review: Guys and Dolls
Des McAnuff's uneven production of this classic Frank Loesser musical is a simultaneously razzmatazz and tawdry affair

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Guys and Dolls
Is anything more dispiriting than knowing within the first minutes that the revival you’re watching of a traditionally hilarious musical comedy isn’t going to be funny? That’s exactly the specter haunting the Nederlander Theatre, where director Des McAnuff is ostensibly presenting Guys and Dolls, albeit one that kicks off with petty theft, bank robbery, and murder (well, sort of). Rolling in the aisles yet, kids? . . .

CurtainUp

Review: Guys and Dolls
A revival that doesn't do justice to Runyon's flavorful vernacular.

 

Chicago Tribune Theater Loop Blog

Guys and Dolls on Broadway: A floating crap game of uncertain direction
Broadway has always been a floating crap game. But as this show-killing recession deepens, beleaguered producers are clearly feeling like every new opening is like attempting a Hail Mary pass against Big Jule's crooked dice.The first Broadway revival...