AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

Updates for March 24, 2009:

New York Post

Cindy Adams: Thank 'God' for a delicious new play

Time Out New York

Review: God of Carnage
All-star cast rips into Yasmina Reza's comedy

Hartford Courant

'God Of Carnage' Is Gripping, Intensely Acted

AmericanTheaterWeb

Review - God of Carnage
Adults Behaving Badly

New York Times

Rumble in the Living Room
“God of Carnage” definitely delivers the cathartic release of watching other people’s marriages go boom.

New York Daily News

Oh, 'God of Carnage,' that's whacky theater
James Gandolfini, Tony Soprano himself, is one of four first-class actors at the top of their game in the combustible comedy “God of Carnage,” which opened Sunday night and could be called “Grownups Gone Wild!”

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of God of Carnage
It was supposed to be so calm and civil. Michael and Veronica had arranged to meet with Alan and Annette to discuss the playground brawl that broke out between their 11-year-old sons that resulted in two broken teeth. The middle aged couples tried to negotiate a settlement where they would formally apologize. Sounds pretty reasonable, right..

Newsday

Theater review: 'God of Carnage'
It's a jungle up there. What fun. The two middle-aged couples in the artsy-stark Brooklyn town house only appear to be civilized parents discussing a playground fight between their 11-year-old boys. Pay attention to the opening music. Those tribal drums are hardly incidental.

New York Post

Upper middle-class clowns
'We're not living in Kin hasa!" cries the well- heeled Veronica. "What goes on in Cobble Hill Park re flects the values of Western society!" Based on what precedes that outburst, said values include selfishness, amorality, neuroticism, arrogance and cruelty perfect ingredients for a comedy. After making you laugh...

ny1

NY1 Theater Review: "God Of Carnage"

The New Yorker

John Lahr: “West Side Story” and “God of Carnage” on Broadway.

Bergen Record

The unhappy marriage was never more of a pleasure
Evenings in the theater don't get any funnier than "God of Carnage," Yasmina Reza's romp through the weed-filled garden of modern marriage.

Associated Press

'God of Carnage' Hilariously Trashes Civility
Calling Miss Manners.

Bloomberg.com

Gandolfini, Daniels Turn Playground Brawl Into Class Warfare: John Simon
Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage,” with Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden, proves superior entertainment at Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. What a pleasant surprise to share a walloping good time with the audience at this comedy, whose ferocious title paradoxically reinforces the subtly furibund fun.

USA Today

'God of Carnage,' 'Blithe Spirit' lifting spirits on Broadway

Variety

Review: God of Carnage
Examining how the straitjacket of civilized society can barely contain the primitive beast within,"God of Carnage" picks an easy target in the complacent bourgeoisie. But the savagery of its dissection of interpersonal politics is played to perfection by a scorching cast in Matthew Warchus' pungent production.

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: God of Carnage
Bottom Line: It might not be "Art," but Yasmina Reza's hilarious boulevard comedy should be a raving Broadway success.

Back Stage

God of Carnage reviewed by David Sheward [critic's pick]
Two sets of upper-middle-class parents amicably meet to settle a schoolyard dispute between their young sons. With generous helpings of alcohol, the adults become as irrational and bad-tempered as their kids.

TheaterMania

Review: God of Carnage
Yasmina Reza's entertaining and soigne comedy about warring parents is well directed and beautifully performed.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: God of Carnage
How often is the worst day of your life also the funniest? To the four characters in Yasmina Reza’s blisteringly outrageous new play God of Carnage, which just opened at the Jacobs, it occurs with alarming regularity. ...

nytheatre.com

Review: God of Carnage

Chicago Tribune

James Gandolfini stars in 'God of Carnage'
"God of Carnage," the savvy and deliciously caustic new comedy of urban ill-manners from the French writer Yasmina Reza now at the Bernard Jacobs Theatre, shoots its entire clip of sardonic bullets in just 90 minutes.

Los Angeles Times Culture Monster Blog

Review of "God of Carnage" on Broadway
Reporting from New York—Civilization’s thin veneer gets mercilessly stripped in “God of Carnage,” French playwright Yasmina Reza’s savage comedy about two urban couples attempting to maturely resolve an altercation that occurred between their 11-year-old sons in a neighborhood park. This quartet fits the demographic that European writers and filmmakers love to defile—affluent, well-educated and liberal (sort of like their audience). In other words, don’t count on the characters setting a sterling example for the kids.

Updates, 3:00PM EST, March 20, 2009

AmericanTheaterWeb

Review - West Side Story
A Beautifully Compelling Revival

New York Times

Our Gangs
Arthur Laurents has exchanged insolence for innocence in the new revival of “West Side Story,” and, as with most such bargains, there are dividends and losses.

New York Daily News

'West Side' revival is halfway there
Forget the Sharks' and Jets' bad boys. It's the girls who rule in this uneven new Broadway production of "West Side Story," which manages only intermittently to take us "somewhere" special.

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of West Side Story
This is not your grandmother’s “West Side Story.” Tony and Maria are making out like bunnies at first sight. The Jets, once a clean-cut gang, now resemble skinheads covered in grit and grime. And in an attempt to make the musical more realistic and relevant, the Puerto Rican Sharks now occasionally speak and sing in Spanish. For example, Stephen Sondheim’s lyric “I Feel Pretty” is now “Siento Hermosa.”

Newsday

Review: 'West Side Story'
The much-anticipated rethinking of "West Side Story" is neither revelation nor vandalism

New York Post

Shark attack!
'West Side Story' feels pretty...good

New York Magazine

Come Again?
Revivals of West Side Story and Blithe Spirit work, more or less—more thanks to two performances

Bergen Record

Powerful dance in an age-old story
The Sharks and Jets are back in Broadway's revival of 'West Side Story.'

Washington Post

Theater Review: Broadway's 'West Side Story' at the Palace Theatre
At last, Josefina Scaglione gets the Tony she deserves. And we're not talking about a certain coveted statuette. No, it's Matt Cavenaugh's portrayal of Tony, the reformed hoodlum who sweeps a Puerto Rican girl off her feet, that has risen to the occasion in the newly, slightly improved...

Los Angeles Times Culture Monster Blog

Review: 'West Side Story' on Broadway
The further we get in time from when “West Side Story” was written, the more the musical’s mythic dimension come into focus. This beloved 1957 classic earns its timeless status not through the authenticity of its snapshot of gang-ridden New York but rather through its re-envisioning of “Romeo and Juliet” as a ravishing fusion of drama, dance and song.

Associated Press

Dancing, music still shine in 'West Side Story'
The Sharks and the Jets are facing off again for turf supremacy, and that's the good news. More than a half-century after it first opened on Broadway, "West Side Story" remains Broadway's best dance-driven musical.

Wall Street Journal

Tough Guys Don't Dance
Arthur Laurents's "West Side Story" has been revised and reconfigured to appeal to a new generation of theatergoers, but with disappointing results.

Bloomberg.com

`West Side Story' Revival Is Tight, Tough, Not to Be Missed: John Simon
“West Side Story” is back! The Laurents-Bernstein-Sondheim-Robbins landmark musical returns in an important production to Broadway’s Palace Theatre, tweaked and directed by its indomitable 91-year-old librettist, Arthur Laurents. Whether you’ve seen several mountings of it or none, you will want to catch this one.

USA Today

'West Side Story' revival gets a cultural makeover
... The irony is that Laurents' attempts to be inclusive and grittily realistic — the final scene in particular suffers for his insistence on technical accuracy — make the show seem no fresher, only a tiny bit less magical.

Variety

Review: West Side Story
The consummate craftsmanship of "West Side Story," with its matchless ability to weave a solemn narrative through music and dance, still dazzles after more than 50 years.

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: West Side Story
Bottom Line: A grittier, tougher, bilingual “West Side Story” that doesn’t necessarily improve on the original.

Back Stage

West Side Story reviewed by David Sheward [critic's pick]
It happened for me during "America." I forgot I was sitting in a Broadway theatre watching professional actors in a revival of West Side Story.

TheaterMania

Review: West Side Story
Arthur Laurents' Broadway revival proves that the classic musical remains vital after more than 50 years.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: West Side Story
They’re at it again, those two bloodthirsty factions battling for limited space. Their conflict may seem meaningless to you, but to them it’s literally a matter of life and death. So when you see them duking it out onstage at the Palace, in the new revival of West Side Story that just opened there, you can’t help but be reminded of the countless other times they’ve played their violent game in the name of some primitive notion of progress.

CurtainUp

Review: West Side Story
Emotions run both caliente and frio in this close to perfect revival in
which Puerto Rican Spanish has been integrated into the spoken text and sung lyrics.

 

Back Stage

Rooms: A Rock Romance reviewed by Andy Propst
This familiar tale is made plausible, and curiously pleasant, by the performers, who uncover surprising depths in these Scottish youths

New York Daily News

'Rock Romance' makes a fine duet
Can a quirky female lyricist and a reclusive rocker who can wrap his guitar around a melody make music - and find love - in the big city?...

New York Post

It's Scot fun to be in love
It's hard enough to pull off a rock musical, let alone an intimate two-hander. Add an accent - and not just any accent: a Glasgow brogue - and you have a daunting task on your hands. And yet Paul Scott Goodman's "ROOMS a rock romance" turns out to be an appealing surprise. Much of the credit goes to Leslie Kritzer and Doug...

Associated Press

Youthful romance musically flourishes in 'Rooms'
It's a sound formula for fun musical theater -- rock 'n' roll with an edge, youthful romance and fresh comedy performed with an exaggerated Scottish brogue.

Variety

Review: Rooms: A Rock Romance
Off Broadway has a potential hit in "Rooms," Paul Scott Goodman's "rock romance." Goodman's varied and impressive score combines with Scott Schwartz's canny staging and strong performances from Leslie Kritzer and Doug Kreeger to offset a certain inevitability in the plot.

TheaterMania

Review: ROOMS: A Rock Romance
This two-handed tuner quickly turns into a mirthless melodrama

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Rooms
Any room - or theater - is more interesting when Leslie Kritzer is in it. With a stunning belt voice, the crack timing of a Golden Age comedienne, and a naked connection to her soul, she’s one of the few young

nytheatre.com

Review: Rooms: A Rock Romance

CurtainUp

Review: Rooms
A disappointing two-hander about a reclusive musician, and the far more ambitious womanwho coaxes him out of his room for a brief trip to the top of punk rock stardom

 

Back Stage

The Good Negro reviewed by Andy Propst [critic'spick]
There's almost a Shakespearean quality to Tracey Scott Wilson's The Good Negro, an examination of behind-the-scenes events during the civil rights movement in Alabama circa 1963.

New York Times

Showing Human Side of ’60s Fight for Freedom
“The Good Negro,” a skillful new historical drama by Tracey Scott Wilson, considers a pivotal passage in the civil rights movement.

New York Daily News

Finding fault lines in '60s civil rights battles
Drawing on historical events and figures of the tumultuous 1960s, “The Good Negro” is a good play getting an equally fine production at the Public Theater.

Associated Press

'Good Negro' examines '60s civil rights movement
Monumental themes encased in historical drama are not easy to pull off. Yet Tracey Scott Wilson manages to avoid sermonizing pitfalls in "The Good Negro," her engrossing, highly theatrical take on the burgeoning civil rights movement in Birmingham, Ala., in the early 1960s.

Bloomberg.com

`Good Negro' Turns Adultery, Race Riots Into Harrowing Drama: John Simon
Political drama is a rather rare phenomenon in U.S. theater. All the more praise to Tracey Scott Wilson’s “The Good Negro,” at New York’s Public Theater, for bringing to vibrant life the black movement in 1962 Birmingham, Alabama, as it takes a giant step toward desegregation.

TheaterMania

Review: The Good Negro
Tracey Scott Wilson's play about the human flaws of 1960s Civil Rights leaders is at times maddeningly simplistic.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: The Good Negro
With her absorbing new play The Good Negro, which just opened at The Public Theater, Tracey Scott Wilson wants it known that the greatest men aren’t always great, or even good, people. . . .

nytheatre.com

Review: The Good Negro
Our reviewer Martin Denton thinks this might be the most important play of the season...

CurtainUp

Review: The Good Negro
Tracey Scott Wilson doesn't just lean on actual events but knows how to transform them into a ripping good behind the headlines story with all-around dramatic flair

'kül

The Good Negro
Even in segregated Alabama, 1962, things were hardly black and white, and that's what makes Tracey Scott Wilson's meaty new play, The Good Negro, a Technicolor triumph. This radiance of nuance represents the truth: ...

 

Updates for March 17, 2009:

The Guardian

Blithe Spirit, Shubert Theatre, New York
With a lavish set and excerpts from Coward songs between acts, this is as good a cure for grimness as it ever was, says Emma Brockes

Time Out New York

Review: Blithe Spirit
Angela Lansbury heads up a hauntingly fun new revival of the Noël Coward comedy classic.

Hartford Courant

Lansbury, Ebersole Help Make 'Blithe Spirit' Soar
Hail to thee, "Blithe Spirit." The revival of Noël Coward's 1941 ghost story opened Sunday in a transcendent revival at the Shubert Theatre in New York

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AmericanTheaterWeb

Review - Blithe Spirit
Breezy Comedy for the Spring

New York Times

The Medium as the Messenger
This genial but bumpy new revival of Noël Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” stars Angela Lansbury in her juiciest role in years.

New York Daily News

Lansbury moves us, not 'Spirit'
Playing an eccentric psychic medium who stirs up ghostly trouble in “Blithe Spirit,” Angela Lansbury may be fidgety and frazzled at times, but she’s the spark in the new production of Noel Coward’s 1941 comedy, now open at the Shubert.

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of Blithe Spirit
“Blithe Spirit” is advertised outside, but this Broadway revival of Noel Coward’s 1941 screwball comedy may as well call itself “Angela Lansbury Love Fest.”

Newsday

Review: Angela Lansbury takes "Blithe Spirit" to heights
Broadway audiences have been known to interrupt a production to applaud a famous actor's entrance. On occasion, they clap after a fancy exit. But I can't recall a time when an audience has burst into applause, over and over, just about every time the star comes onto the stage or walks off.

New York Post

'Spirit' willing, flash weak
At this point in her career, Angela Lansbury's approach to the stage is that of a jazz virtuoso: She may not always stick to the written score, but somehow the music comes out just fine. Like her character ..

ny1

NY1 Theater Review: "Blithe Spirit"
...the champagne-light supernatural farce by Noel Coward, and it should continue to haunt the Shubert for a good long time.

The New Yorker

“33 Variations,” “Blithe Spirit.” by John Lahr

Bergen Record

Theater review: "Blithe Spirit"
If the revival of "Blithe Spirit" were a dessert, it would be an unrisen soufflé.

Associated Press

Lansbury and Company Wittily Spin 'Blithe Spirit'
Light and airy requires heavy lifting -- theatrically speaking

Bloomberg.com

Angela Lansbury's Comic Psychic Lights Up Fervent `Spirit': John Simon
When a scintillating comedy, masterly direction and superior performances come together, what have you got? A rip-roaring revival of Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” that lights up Broadway’s Shubert Theatre.

Variety

Review: Blithe Spirit
While the dry martinis flow freely among hosts and guests alike in "Blithe Spirit," those libations do little to loosen up Michael Blakemore's classy but stiff Broadway revival.

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: Blithe Spirit
Bottom Line: This revival of Coward's 1941 comedy proves that the playwright still has the "talent to amuse."

Back Stage

Blithe Spirit reviewed by David Sheward [critic's pick]
It's clear that audiences filling the Shubert Theatre have not come principally to see Blithe Spirit, Noël Coward's classic comedy of whimsy and the occult.

TheaterMania

Review: Blithe Spirit
Angela Lansbury gives a side-splitting performance as Madame Arcati in Michael Blakemore's near-perfect revival of Noel Coward's world-class comedy.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Blithe Spirit
Madame Arcati, the motley clairvoyant around whom the most otherworldly aspects of Noël Coward’s heavenly comedy Blithe Spirit revolve, is by her nature not a headline grabber. She might be good for a half-page profile in an alt-weekly, or as a one-liner in the “fashion don’ts” ...

CurtainUp

Review: Blithe Spirit
With New Yorkers being blitzed with bad news, the producers of the latest revival of Noel Coward's wartime prompted ghost story may well be right in thinking that it will once again prove to be a perfect escape from grim reality