By Rex Reed 12/20/11 7:36pm

theater

Michael Chernus and Pierce.

Close Up Space May Be Just a Little Too Close for Comfort

After suffering through the massacre of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, I thought I had seen the dregs of the New York theater season. I was wrong. Things reach the absolute nadir of abysmal incompetence with the new Manhattan Theatre Club production at the City Center of a dopey, pretentious travesty called Close Up Space.

The almost always watchable David Hyde Pierce stars as Paul Barrow, the harassed editor in chief of a small but distinctive publishing house called Tandem Books. Read More

By Daniel D'Addario 7/20/11 2:36pm

theater

Nixon (Getty Images)

Cynthia Nixon To Star in Wit

Cynthia Nixon returns to Broadway in a play that–unlike her Tony-winning turn in Rabbit Hole, which went on to win a Pulitzer–is already Pulitzer-anointed. Ms. Nixon is to play Dr. Vivian Bearing, an English scholar dying of cancer, the Manhattan Theatre Club announced today. (It’s a familiar topic for Ms. Nixon, who’s currently in the Read More

By Jesse Oxfeld 3/03/10 3:18pm

A Beautiful Tempest. Plus: Equivocation in Midtown

The Bridge Project was founded last year to mount productions of classical theater with top-flight Anglo-American casts under the direction of Sam Mendes. It does that, certainly, and does it well, but perhaps the most notable element of a Bridge Project effort is the stunning production design. Shakespeare’s The Tempest—which opened last week at the Read More

By John Heilpern 12/13/04 12:00am

Doubt: Nun Cries Sex Abuse, But This Sister’s a Disgrace

My difficulty with John Patrick Shanley’s highly regarded moral parable Doubt at Manhattan Theatre Club has all to do with the dubious credibility of its central character, the righteous, nagging nun.

Rarely has any woman-least of all a nun-enraged me so much. Yet if anything, I’m sentimental about nuns, as Mr. Shanley is in his Read More

By John Heilpern 11/17/03 12:00am

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Who’s the Most Predictable of All

I regret to say that there are a number of problems with Richard Greenberg’s The Violet Hour , and one of them is the theater it’s in. I’ve already lamented the Manhattan Theatre Club’s expansion into Broadway at the Biltmore as another dangerous example of nonprofit-theater “Broadwayitis.” In my view, the entire purpose and lifeblood Read More

By John Heilpern 6/03/02 12:00am

Missing Link to Crib and Stroller Found in House and Garden

Concerning Alan Ayckbourn’s House and Garden , playing simultaneously at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I and next-door at Stage II: They’re certainly a first in theater history. For some peculiar reason, until now, no one has thought of writing two interweaving plays to be performed at the same time by the same cast playing Read More

By John Heilpern 6/19/00 12:00am

Proof Positive of Fragile Life and Love Through Higher Math

I know where I stand when it comes to the dramatically brainy subjects of nuclear physics, Fermat’s Last Theorem or-to pluck another example out of thin air-Heisenberg’s dear old Uncertainty Principle, which, as everyone surely knows by now, equals the square on the hippopotamus provided the photon of Z is greater than the particle of Read More

By John Heilpern 3/20/00 12:00am

The Wild Party ‘s Over, And the Allergist ‘s Stuffed-Up

There are no accidents, said Dr. Jung, though he was never a drama critic. But what accounts for the phenomenon of two productions of The Wild Party ? Unless, that is, Joseph Moncure March’s 1926 jazz-age poem about druggy, tragic decadence is coincidentally the spirit of our times.

Yet March’s quite renowned syncopated opening to Read More

By Todd Gitlin 6/22/98 12:00am

Furor Over ‘Gay Jesus’ Part of a Cultural Chill

Now that the Manhattan Theater Club has rediscovered its nerve and reinstated Corpus Christi on its fall schedule, let’s pause for a moment and clarify some arguments.

For readers who have been on Mars for the past month, here’s a recap. Terrence McNally’s new play is said (by people who haven’t seen it, though various Read More