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

Bruce Norris likes to write characters who stir the pot, and Jeremy Shamos is terrific at playing them. Re-teaming with their Clybourne Park director, Tony winner Pam MacKinnon  ( Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ), they bring us The Qualms , Norris's new play about sexual politics. Shamos plays Chris, a sort of everyman, he seems like an average, middle-aged white guy. Chris is married to Kristy ( Sarah Goldberg ), a sweet-looking blonde with alabaster skin, and the newlyweds are at Gary ( John Procaccino ) and Teri ( Kate Arrington ( Grace ))'s beach condo. The couples met recently while on vacation in Mexico, and Chris and Kristy have decided to accept Gary and Teri's invitation to join their swingers club. Playing out in real time, the other members of the club begin to arrive: There's Deb (Donna Lynne Champlin), an overweight, average looking woman, and her boyfriend, Ken ( Andy Lucien ), a black man who is cut like an Adonis and carries himself in an...

The late, great Wendy Wasserstein 's seminal work, The Heidi Chronicles , was something of a revelation when it debuted off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1989, and once it transferred to Broadway, the play won the Tony Award for Best Play. Through the experiences of Heidi Holland ( Elisabeth Moss ), an art historian coming of age in the 60s, Wasserstein explored one view of the feminist movement, and where its progenitors ended up. (Through a series of vignettes, we see Heidi as an adolescent in 1965, and then check in with her over the years, all the way through 1989.) Seeing how relevant this is—how little has changed—is somewhat disappointing. Maybe it's not fair to say nothing has changed. Maybe a lot has, and what hasn't is simply amplified because of changes in technology. There are still institutional blockades against women, and women are still stigmatized for their choices (when the old, wrinkly men who write laws let...

A starry revival of Edward Albee 's A Delicate Balance is now on Broadway. The classic play features, as many Albee works do, smart people talking eloquently around relationships and their inherent issues. The conversations all take place in the living room "of a large and well-appointed suburban house. Now," program notes state, and over the course of one weekend (Friday night to early Sunday morning, to be exact). The home (sumptuous scenic design by Santo Loquasto ) belongs to Agnes ( Glenn Close ) and Tobias ( John Lithgow ). Agnes begins by theorizing about her demise, and whether or not one can know if s/he is crazy. It sets the stage for the many philosophical wars that will be waged, as Agnes's sister, Claire ( Lindsay Duncan ), a defiant drunk, stirs things up; Agnes and Tobias's daughter, Julia ( Martha Plimpton ), returns home, escaping another failing marriage; and old friends Harry and Edna ( Bob Balaban and Clare Higgins ) interpolate themse...

Is it ever so simple as just having dinner with friends? No way, according to Donald Margulies’s terrific and Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Dinner with Friends , being given a great New York revival by Roundabout Theatre Company. The play moves around in time but centers on dinners (and other meals) among two couples: Gabe and Karen (Jeremy Shamos and Marin Hinkle) and Beth and Tom (Heather Burns and Darren Pettie). Gabe and Tom have been friends since college; Gabe and Karen have been married for about 13 years; Beth and Tom have been married for 12 years. We meet them all throughout act one, as both connections and rifts are revealed. Kicking off act two is a flashback to the summer when Beth and Tom met, having been set up by Gabe and Karen (this scene is the only time all four are on stage together, and it’s vital to fully understanding the characters and the dynamics between all four). We then jump back to the present and continue to see how many people are actually in one re...