Reviewing the Drama: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Ballet, Movies, and TV Reviews

The last time I saw "theatre noir" I was thoroughly turned off. (It was Mike Bencivenga's Billy and Ray .) In the hands of the talented playwright Leslye Headland ( Bachelorette , Assistance ), though, the genre is interesting and provocative. The Layover  begins with two strangers on a plane, Shellie (Annie Parisse) and Dex (Adam Rothenberg). Their flight is delayed, and they start chatting. In the next scene, they are in the airport terminal, their flight having been canceled. I noticed how easily they spoke to each other, how easily they told each other what I consider intimate details of their lives. I thought, "How interesting that they can open up like that." I supposed that since they were strangers, with little to no risk of seeing each other again, they felt comfortable being honest, being themselves. I was sure of where this was going. But then Headland introduced a gear shift (as she called it in a post-show discussion), and the play moved dec...

Tuesday and Wednesday in the Park with Jake and Annaleigh When (affordable, performance-only) tickets went on sale for City Center's one-night-only gala performance of Stephen Sondheim 's Sunday in the Park with George , starring Jake Gyllenhaal ( Nightcrawler , Little Shop of Horrors ), they sold out in minutes. Due to ticket demand, two additional benefit performances have been added, Tuesday, October 25, and Wednesday, October 26. Tickets to these performances go on sale to the general public at noon on Wednesday, July 20, but City Center members will have pre-sale access beginning at noon on Monday, July 18. (Gala tickets for the original Monday, October 24, performance are still available, and are on sale now.) In addition, it was announced that Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford ( You Can't Take It With You , Masters of Sex ) will join Gyllenhaal as George's muse, Dot. This will mark Ashford's Sondheim debut. Visit the City Center website to learn more and ...

You walk into the theatre, and the stage looks large. It's dimly lit, and there are few set pieces. An over-sized butcher-block island sits at the center. Cookbooks line one of its sides. There's a built in sink, but it's small enough that there's still a great, big work surface. The wooden beams lingering over the island suggest a roof, and the stage right beams are adorned with leafy tree branches, suggesting the outdoors. The walls are all black; you can barely discern the two cutouts on the back wall that serve as entry and exit points. It's like a vacuum, both sucking you in (maybe back to something) and leaving room for your imagination (or memory) to run wild. This scenic design, by Rachel Hauck ( Dry Powder ), wonderfully sets the stage for Anne Washburn 's Antlia Pneumatica , a play that works better on stage than I think did on the page. It's essentially a memory play, and what are memories if not feelings, recollections of some sensory exp...