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

It was a night of new and fashionable works at New York City Ballet. Four of the five works on the program were part of the Fall Gala, which, once again, saw choreographers collaborate with fashion designers, bringing couture to the ballet. First up was Polaris , the Myles Thatcher ballet set to a William Walton score, and featuring costumes by Zuhair Murad . This is a beautiful, romantic piece. Tiler Pick shines like the star she is, at times looking for her way, with an assist from the always terrific Craig Hall , and sometimes leading the small ensemble, like the North Star. Murad's costumes are gorgeous, a fabulous translation of Murad's runway and red carpet gowns to ballet. Next came The Blue of Distance , Robert Binet 's ballet that uses Maurice Ravel music and new costumes designed by Hanako Maeda of ADEAM . This almost feels like a variation on Polaris , except set underwater. The women's costumes look like they have fish scales. Throughout it ...

We've seen plenty of wartime dramas in the battlefield. We've also seen, especially recently, several plays and films about veterans' experiences upon returning home (including the just-opened Ugly Lies the Bone ). In Eclipsed , playwright Danai Gurira shows us a different side of war: The women who endure while the fighting rages on, and how they help bring about peace. Eclipsed begins in Liberia, circa March 2003, about six months before the civil war concluded. We begin to get to know Helena ( Saycon Sengbloh ), Bessie ( Pascale Armand ) and The Girl ( Lupita Nyong'o ). Helena, called Number 1 because she is the commanding officer's first "wife," and Bessie, Number 2, are trying to hide The Girl and keep her from becoming Number 4. We later meet Number 3, Maima ( Zainab Jah ), who, rather than sit around in a house waiting for her "husband" to select her for one-sided sex, has taken up arms and feels empowered as a soldier out in the ba...

"We are not born to endure. We're born to recover," says The Voice in Lindsey Ferrentino 's new play, Ugly Lies the Bone . The Voice ( Caitlin O'Connell ) is talking to Jess ( Mamie Gummer ), a young, female veteran who, upon returning home with significant and painful injuries, is undergoing a form of virtual reality therapy. Scenes of Jess in therapy are interspersed with scenes of her trying to readjust to life after war. She is in Titusville, Florida (a small town due east of Orlando, the heart of Florida's space coast, as the program says), and living with her sister, Kacie ( Karron Graves ), in their mother's house. (Mom is in a nursing home.) In addition to learning to manage her pain and how to avoid flashbacks, Jess must also navigate how to relate to the people she used to know, like Stevie (a great Chris Stack ), a former flame, as well as people new to her, like Kacie's boyfriend, Kelvin ( Haynes Thigpen ), whom Jess doesn't trust....

My first night at the ballet during the 2015-2016 New York City Ballet season was a celebration of American composers, and featured a mix of choreographers. First up was the 1991 Peter Martins ballet, Ash , with a commissioned score by Michael Torke . Ash  started off feeling a little chaotic (which it shouldn't; the ballet only uses ten dancers), and it wasn't a controlled chaos. I was feeling uncomfortable. After the first few minutes, though, the ensemble left, leaving Ashly Isaacs and Taylor Stanley to dance a pas de deux. Their dynamite dancing brought things back under control. When the ensemble returned, a bit of the chaos did, too. I suppose this is fitting, at there is a great deal of tension in the non-stop score. Still, I found Ash  to be a rather unimaginative ballet. Next was Sonatas and Interludes , a Richard Tanner  ballet set to a John Cage  composition that is played on a prepared piano. (Wednesday night's pianist was Cameron Grant .)...

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees Annoucned Nominees for the 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class have been announced. Among the nominees are Janet Jackson , t he Smiths , N.W.A. , Chaka Khan , Nine Inch Nails  and more. Winners/inductees will be announced in December; they'll then be honored in a rocking ceremony in the spring, which will be edited and broadcast on HBO later in the year. Rolling Stone  has the full list of nominated artists. While you're there, you can vote for the artist you'd most like to see inducted into the Rock Hall. Hamilton News Go behind the scenes at Hamilton  on a two-show day, courtesy of featured player, Anthony Ramos , who plays John Laurens and Phillip Hamilton. Playbill has the photo essay. In other Hamilton  news, Andrew Rannells  will take on the role of King George III from October 27 through November 29 while current king, Jonathan Groff, films the concluding Looking  special. Groff will retake his throne on...

I wish I could tell you all  about Robert O'Hara 's terrific new play, Barbecue . I wish I could tell you about the Brechtian breaks and just why the play is so provocative, exactly how it plays with our perceptions of race, sexuality, truth vs. fact and the artifice of making art. But to dive into the details would be to spoil the fun of sitting in the theatre and watching it unfold. I can tell you that the play begins at a barbecue in a public park. Siblings are gathered to perform an intervention for their youngest sister, whose drinking and narcotics habit is getting out of control. You start to develop ideas and judgments about these people and then O'Hara ( Bootycandy ) flips the script and presents the same situation in a different light. He continues to tantalize the audience with the unexpected, constantly shifting any sort of home base, any sort of cornerstone that says, "this is what's happening." We don't ever know precisely what happened...

There was an exciting pre-show at the Biltmore Theatre on the night I saw Fool for Love . The older couples behind me were having a lively conversation, which, at one point, ventured into the uneven distribution of legroom among their seats. (When asked if one seat had more than the other, one of the gentleman quipped, "I don't know. I didn't bring my tape measure.") A few seats to my left, an older man was whistling to himself, providing the pre-show house music. As the theatre filled up, an awards prognosticator for The Hollywood Reporter  sat in front of me and Oscar nominee and playwright Jesse Eisenberg ( The Social Network ) sat next to me. Then the Sam Shepard play began. I wanted so badly to love it madly. I wanted to be enthralled with the tumultuous relationship between Eddie (Sam Rockwell) and May (Nina Arianda). But I just wasn't. It simply isn't something I can get excited about as a dramaturg, though the performances from the leading playe...