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

No matter who you are, you're somebody's daughter and, for better or for worse, that means someone has expectations of you and you have either an example to follow or expectations to rebel against. (I suppose the same is true of sons, but right now we're talking about daughters and the unique mother–daughter dynamic.) In Chisa Hutchinson's play, directed by May Adrales, we look at three daughters, all Asian, each at a different stage of their lives. Alex Chan (Michelle Heera Kim), born in America, is a 15-year-old high school student. She excels academically, plays multiple instruments, and speaks even more languages. On paper, she's somebody's perfect Asian daughter. Her mother is Millie (Vanessa Kai). Millie and her husband, Richard (David Shih) immigrated to the United States shortly after they married. Their dynamic is such that Richard is responsible for working and providing for the family; Millie is responsible for raising the family. (The family, at...

Coming to the Boards Regional —There's a stage adaptation of Alanis Morissette 's Jagged Little Pill in the works, and it's premiering at American Repertory Theater (in Massachusetts) next year. Featuring Morissette's music and a book by Oscar winner Diablo Cody ( Juno , Young Adult ), Jagged Little Pill will be directed by Tony winner Diane Paulus ( Pippin , Waitress ) and feature orchestrations by Tony and Pulitzer winner Tom Kitt ( Next to Normal , If/Then ), who, you might remember, also provided the incredible orchestrations for American Idiot . Visit Playbill for more. Off-Broadway —A new play by Zoe Kazan (as a writer: We Live Here , as an actress: Love, Love, Love ) has been added to Lincoln Center Theater's 2017-2018 season. After the Blast , set in a Children of Men -style dystopia, will begin performances at the LCT 3 Claire Tow Theatre October 7. Opening night is set for October 23, and the limited engagement is scheduled to conclude November...

Carousel   Revival to Hit Broadway in 2018 A revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel  will bow on Broadway in spring 2018, officially opening at a theatre to be announced on March 23. The production will be directed by Jack O'Brien  ( Catch Me If You Can ) and choreographed by NYCB resident choreographer  Justin Peck  ( Everywhere We Go , The Times Are Racing ). Peck's fellow NYCB dancers Amar Ramasar  and Brittany Pollack  will be among the company, figuring prominently in the act two dream ballet. The production will star Tony winner Jessie Mueller  ( Beautiful , Waitress ) as Julie Jordan and two-time Tony nominee Joshua Henry  ( The Scottsboro Boys , Violet ,  Shuffle Along... ) as Billy Bigelow. (Now this photo of Justin and Joshua has been demystified.) Opera diva Renee Fleming  will also appear in the production. In the  Playbill  announcement, Peck promises "an even more dance-and-movement-f...

Casting News Okieriete Onaodowan , who originated the roles of Hercules Mulligan/James Madison in Hamilton , will take on the role of Pierre in Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812  beginning July 3. Josh Groban , who originated the role on Broadway, will, as previously reported , play his final performance on July 2. Onaodowan will remain with the production through September 4. Broadway.com has more. Tony- and Grammy-nominated song writer Sara Bareilles  will step into the lead role of Jenna in Waitress , for which she wrote the score. Jessie Mueller , who originated the role, will play her final performance March 26; Bareilles begins performances March 31, and will remain with the show through June 11. Playbill has more. Complete casting for MTC's revival of The Little Foxes  has been announced. Joining the previously announced headliners, Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon, will be Darren Goldstein  ( Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson , The Affair ), ...

We begin by spending a day in the life of Ken ( Reed Birney ) and Nancy ( Annette O'Toole ), a man and woman from Nebraska. They drive, in silence, to church. They sit, in silence, in church. They have dinner, in silence. They visit Ken's ailing mother, Cammie ( Kathleen Peirce ), and they only speak to her, not to each other. At home, they watch TV in silence. The silences aren't awkward; they are just what (sometimes) happens after decades of marriage. But something is stirring in Ken's soul. Ken and Nancy break the silence in the middle of the night when Ken rushes to the bathroom, puts a towel over this face and begins to cry. Nancy enters the bathroom and tries to help, but Ken won't let her. (O'Toole is achingly effective in this scene; Nancy is Ken's wife, and it's her job to help. Why won't he let her help?) He finally relents, declaring he doesn't believe in God. Talking about the genesis of his 2003 play in a post-show discussion...

A quick note to praise Notes from the Field : Sherrilyn Ifill , the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., says, "Policies are the investments we make." The incomparable Anna Deavere Smith 's Notes from the Field , which is comprised of verbatim interviews Smith conducted with teachers, students, parents, elected officials, and others, crystallizes the ways in which so many of the issues facing us are inextricably linked. The particular focus here is mass incarceration (the disproportionate incarceration of minorities, especially black men, to be particular) and the role of education (or lack thereof) in said challenge. Through Smith's interviews, we learn that education isn't just about reading, writing, and arithmetic; it's also about learning behavior, and how to respond to various situations, about teaching young people they have options. Another home run from Anna Deavere Smith. ( Notes from the Field...

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...

According to the definition posted in the lobby, "engagements" has three meanings: Formal agreements to get married Arrangements to go somewhere or do something at a fixed time Battles between armed forces In her play, Engagements , playwright Lucy Teitler  explores all three meanings, showing the ever-blurring line between them. Set mostly at a series of engagement parties, Engagements  begins with Lauren ( Ana Nogueira ) speaking into a microphone, telling us her inner monologue. She is admiring her best friend, Allison ( Jennifer Kim ), and remarking that Allison's beau, Mark ( Michael Stahl-David ) is unremarkable. He's just average, she bemoans. But sometimes, as the sage Paula Abdul notes, opposites attract, and all's fair in love and war, so, wouldn't you know it, Lauren and Mark end up sneaking off to a gazebo for a (maybe dangerous) liaison. The rest of the play (which includes a visit from Lauren's cousin, Catherine ( Brooke Weisman ...

Friend art, according to a faux dictionary definition emblazoned on the wall of Second Stage's uptown theatre, is "art a friend makes that a person is forced to go see and/or support out of obligation to the friendship." With Friend Art , playwright Sofia Alvarez explores the challenges and opportunities inherent in friend art. Sitting through Friend Art  (and then reading Alvarez's bio), you get the sense that this is a personal play for her. Perhaps she's been the friend creating "art"; maybe she's been the friend who has had to go see such "art"; or maybe she's been both. Friend Art  focuses on four friends: engaged couple Molly (a strong Zoe Chao ) and Kevin ( Aaron Costa Ganis ), and ex-couple Lil ( Anabelle Lemieux ) and Nate ( Constantine Maroulis ). When Molly was in her 20s, she was pursuing her dream of being an actress. Now in her early 30s, she has a corporate job, one with stability and a comfy paycheck. Kevin, 32, ...

We're much more tuned into other people's lives—you can check in on people via an ever-growing number of social media platforms—but does that mean we're any more connected? That seems to be at the crux of Dear Evan Hansen , a beautiful original musical that just opened at off-Broadway's Second Stage Theatre. Written by Steven Levenson (book) and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (score), the show centers on Evan Hansen (Ben Platt), a high school senior whose awkwardness and social anxiety have kept him on the periphery of social circles. His therapist has given him an exercise: every day, Evan is to write himself a letter beginning with, "Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day because..." One of Evan's letters ends up in the wrong hands. When it does, rather than set the record straight, Evan seizes on the opportunity to become known; to have friends; to get a taste of what he considers a good, normal family life. (Evan's parents are divo...

In the Pulitzer Prize winning Ayad Akhtar play Disgraced , adults of different ethnic and religious backgrounds talk about race and racism, with most of them thinking they are so evolved and post-racial. In Lydia R. Diamond 's new work, Smart People , we are met with a similar premise but with different results. The titular smart people are Jackson ( Mahershala Ali ), an African-American doctor in his residency; Brian ( Joshua Jackson ), a white neuroscience researcher who speaks out against racism; Ginny ( Anne Son ), an Asian-American psychiatrist studying the Asian-American female experience; and Valerie (a captivating and natural Tessa Thompson ), an African-American actress. At rise (Cambridge, MA, circa 2007-2009), Jackson and Brian know each other, but all the other connections will be made throughout the course of the play. (A gripe: we see too little of the development of the relationship between the two women.) Their experiences—both professional and personal—are t...

Much of the action of this new musical takes place in Africa, but don’t expect bird puppets flying overhead (like in The Lion King ) or wonderfully acerbic satire (like in The Book of Mormon ). Instead, Matt Gould and Griffin Matthews ’s Invisible Thread is a personal tale of a young African-American man getting in touch with his roots. Griffin (played by Matthews) is a gay man, a tenor who likes singing in his church choir. He is in a committed relationship with Ryan ( Corey Mach ), a Jewish white guy. When Griffin comes out to his pastor and the church, he is shunned—and stunned. With Griffin looking for direction, Ryan playfully offers that the Jews will take him. Griffin grimaces, but thinking about the Birthright trip, he decides to go to Uganda and connect with his people. He is staying at a compound, where his job is to help build a school, but one day, he meets a group of teenagers who challenge him to become their teacher and, unsurprisingly, end up teaching him a les...

Casting News Mahershala Ali ( House of Cards ) and Joshua Jackson ( The Affair , The Mighty Ducks ) will lead the cast of Smart People , the Lydia R. Diamond play that will bow off-Broadway in the winter. Previews for the Second Stage production, directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon ( A Raisin in the Sun , Holler If Ya Hear Me ) begin January 26, 2016, with opening night of the limited engagement set for February 11. Broadway.com has more. Christopher Fitzgerald  ( Wicked , Finian's Rainbow ) and Keala Settla  ( Hands on a Hardbody , Les Miserables ) have joined the cast of the Broadway-bound Waitress . They join the previously announce Jessie Mueller. Previews begin March 25, 2016, with opening night set for April 24. Visit Playbill for the full cast list. Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade The annual Thanksgiving morning tradition will feature a slew of sure-to-be-great performances. Among those scheduled to perform are the casts of Fiddler on the Roof ; School of ...

"Theatricalizing the personal narrative" is written on the chalkboard. It's something Sherie Rene Scott  and Dick Scanlan  have done successfully (see Everyday Rapture ), and something, mostly on a lark, they ended up teaching to a group of incarcerated men. In Whorl Inside a Loop  (the title refers to your fingerprint), an actress volunteers at a men's prison, and teaches the men, all of whom have been convicted of murder, to express themselves, rehabilitating them through the arts. (Though Scott and Scanlan did teach in a prison, and many of the stories come from actual prisoners, the play is, ultimately, a true work of fiction.) In doing so, the men express that they are not the worst thing they've done. Indeed, these men—all people, in fact—can be the perfect peacock eye whorl, so much good and so much bad in one person. (As a guard says of Sunnyside (a cunningly charismatic Derrick Baskin ), "He's committed the most violent, most unforgivable ...