Standing Room Only

June 22, 2022 What? Another show about a moody, overweight, young Black man with family issues? Like “A Strange Loop,” “Fat Ham” hasan endearing young main character. But “Fat Ham” delivers much more. Preparing for a family barbecue celebrating the marriage of his mother to his uncle, Juicy is visited by the ghost of his […]

June 18, 2022 Classics remain classics because they speak to us-no matter when they were written or where they are set. In a newly-imagined version of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” a family remains stuck in the past. Soon their beloved home and cherry orchard will be put up for auction and sold to pay for […]

June 2, 2022  by Joan Marcus There’s something to be said for star power filling theater seats. Despite some tepid reviews for the latest version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the Longacre Theatre was filled. And why not? It stars Daniel Craig (the most recent James Bond) and Ruth Negga. When Craig makes his first appearance, the […]

May 25, 2022 Mr. Saturday Night I’m a staunch Billy Crystal fan, and judging from the audience’s reaction at the Nederlander Theatre the other night, I’m not alone. I love Crystal’s quick wit, easy laugh and perpetual grin, even as he delivers a barb. Yet, sadly, I didn’t love his new musical “Mr. Saturday Night.” […]

May 12, 2022 Once upon a time there was a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan called The Five Points. For over 70 years, it was a crowded slum, populated mostly by newly -freed slaves and ethnic Irish. Although there was much tension, historically the area is considered one of the first integrated neighborhoods in American history. […]

May 7, 2022 A female press secretary, a female chief of staff, a first lady and several female assistants but even all of them together can’t keep the hapless president from occasionally opening his mouth and putting his foot in it or insulting foreign dignitaries and threatening world peace. No, not Biden, Trump or Clinton, […]

May 2, 2022 Black comedy, or gallows humor, is a style of story telling that makes light of subject matter usually considered somewhat taboo, like death, suicide and disease. Either term applies to Martin McDonagh’s latest play, “Hangmen.” Harry, the main character, is a hangman by trade or that is, he was until hanging was […]

April 26, 2022 Playwright Tracy Letts possesses the extraordinary ability to lull an audience into expecting something dry and ordinary but then making it explosive. Teaming up again with Anna D. Shapiro, his director for “August: Osage County,” Letts takes a banal subject, a city council meeting, and turns into something quite entertaining and unexpected. […]

April 25, 2022 Food is often the centerpiece of family holidays and celebrations. In “Birthday Candles”, the new play presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre, the special food is a traditional birthday cake. It’s recipe has been handed down through generations and the play opens with Ernestine’s mother teaching her […]

April 17, 2022 Photo by Julieta Cervantes When TV’s Murphy Brown was mocking singer Barry Manilow, I was buying his albums and attending his concerts. I was unabashedly a Fanilow. So I looked forward to “Harmony,” the musical that Manilow wrote with Barry Sussman, with whom he has written 200 songs. The show just debuted […]