Elisabeth Vincentelli joined the New York Post as theater critic in February 2009. She previously was arts and entertainment editor at Time Out New York. In the past she's also contributed to publications such as The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, The Believer, Slate and Salon. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
The Mint Theatre specializes in forgotten gems. But it's hard to forget something that was never famous in the first place. "Wife to James Whelan" is an obscure 1930s play -- produced once on the radio and then in...
August 24, 2010 12:00 AMGary Moore spent 10 months teaching English in Shanghai in 1988-’89, leaving the country right after the riots in Tiananmen Square. The bloody event is mentioned in “Burning in China” — his autobiographical solo show...
August 20, 2010 3:04 PM
Since opening on Broadway a year and a half ago, "Next to Normal" won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama plus Tonys for its score and Alice Ripley's lead performance. But its greatest accomplishment, considering the...
August 19, 2010 12:00 AMThere are some things you'd never expect to come out of Sutton Foster's mouth. "Lick my boot" is one. "I'm a brain surgeon" is another. It's all the more jarring because, since her triumph eight years ago in...
August 13, 2010 12:00 AMThe latest show to move from the Fringe to off-Broadway is “Abraham Lincoln’s Big, Gay Dance Party.” But Aaron Loeb’s comedy isn’t likely to improve the Fringe’s poor transfer stats. The amiable play overflows with...
August 12, 2010 1:35 AM
What do you do when you're a 27-year-old writer and your Broadway debut is an embarrassing flop? When his 1993 play "The Twilight of the Golds" closed after just 44 performances, Jonathan Tolins withdrew to lick his...
August 11, 2010 12:00 AM
The Flying Karamazov Broth ers aren't Russian or related, but they do fly. More precisely, they make things fly: The Karamazovs are expert jugglers, and have been flinging stuff in the air since 1973. Nattily...
August 10, 2010 12:00 AM
The new play "Wolves" can be so disarmingly charming that it's hard to nitpick -- you feel as if you're going after a kitten with a baseball bat. But nitpick we must, because while "Wolves" may have assets, it also...
August 09, 2010 12:00 AM
Neil LaBute doesn't take long to drag the protag onists of his new play, "Romance," down a rabbit hole of recrimination. It's what we expect from him, and he does it better than most. But "Romance" isn't your...
August 06, 2010 12:00 AM
By stepping into the revival of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music," Berna dette Peters and Elaine Stritch are doing more than merely replacing Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, respectively. They --...
August 02, 2010 12:00 AM
Don't expect the 12th-century Norman invasion in "The Irish . . . and How They Got That Way": The focus of Frank McCourt's play is much narrower. A better title would be "The Irish-Americans . . . and How They Got That...
July 29, 2010 12:00 AM
It's the oldest story ever told. No, really, it is: This new musical revisits Adam, Eve, the fruit-based temptation and the fall from grace. But though the York Theatre is in the basement of St. Peter's Church, the...
July 16, 2010 12:00 AMThings got hairy for Bianca Leigh when she tried to get less hairy. Born male, Leigh felt she was really female. Since working at Macy's couldn't cover her hormone treatment, in the 1980s she moonlighted as a...
July 12, 2010 12:00 AM
The Japanese import "Musashi," which opened the Lincoln Center Festival last night, is inspired by a legendary 17th-century sword fight. Were this an American production -- particularly a Western -- you'd anticipate a...
July 09, 2010 12:00 AM
Wen David Mamet's play "Race" opened on Broadway in December, I called it a "bewildering muddle" that "sinks into absurdity." What a difference a new cast can make. The brash plot still feels gratuitously...
July 06, 2010 12:00 AM
Some shows are so wrong, they're inad vertently entertaining. Others are just not right: The actors, director and designers do their own thing as if unaware of what their colleagues are up to. The result is the...
July 02, 2010 12:00 AM
In a rare stage appear ance -- his first at the Delacorte Theater -- Al Pacino is affectingly understated (for Al Pacino). On the whole, the Shakespeare in the Park production that just opened is zippy and entertaining...
July 01, 2010 12:00 AM
LCT3 may be the newest and most intimate unit of Lincoln Center Theater, but its shows certainly don't think small. "On the Levee," which opened last night, tackles no less than race, class and father-son relationships...
June 29, 2010 12:00 AMWatching A.R. Gurney's new play is like soaking in a warm, soothing nostalgia bath for an hour and a half. Ah, for the days when theater stars were larger-than-life household names, Gurney seems to sigh. And they...
June 28, 2010 12:00 AM
To say that France and Germany didn't have much of a love connection in the 1930s and '40s is an understatement. But two of those countries' biggest icons, Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier, didn't let that affect...
June 21, 2010 12:00 AM
The Rattlestick Theatre has a vintage tin ceiling. I noticed it because I kept rolling my eyes at all the contrived drama in "Little Doc." Written by Dan Klores -- a publicist turned director of well-received...
June 18, 2010 12:00 AMPoliglot Theater's new "Neither Heaven nor Earth" is billed as a docu-play -- but don't expect much objectivity. Based on extensive interviews conducted by directors/writers John Hansen-Brevetti and Gabriella Pinto...
June 15, 2010 12:00 AM
It would be a tall order for even the most seasoned writers: a play that toys with memory and perception, reality and fantasy, past and present. Christopher Wall is clearly ambitious, but he doesn’t quite follow through...
June 14, 2010 1:34 AM
The Amoralists have become New York's latest It company on the strength of two explosive shows -- last year's "The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side" and this spring's "Happy in the Poorhouse." The enterprising troupe...
June 09, 2010 12:00 AMIt seemed like a great idea: Resurrect a 1931 piece about the Great Depression and put it up in a temporary "pop-up" theater downtown. But this revival of "Can You Hear Their Voices?" confuses Depression with...
June 08, 2010 12:00 AM
It often seems that most of the plays we see in New York focus on a narrow range of people: white, educated members of the middle class, in their 30s or older. It's a demographic that -- surprise! -- reflects the one...
June 03, 2010 12:00 AMDon't judge a book by its cover -- and don't judge a show by its title. The name of Stephen Belber's new two-hander, "Dusk Rings a Bell," evokes the horrifying prospect of an Emily Dickinson poetry slam. But the play's...
May 28, 2010 12:00 AM
The characters of "The Burnt Part Boys" walk a long and winding road. This being theater, you may think this is a metaphor -- but no, there's an actual trek involved. And it goes on and on and on. This new musical,...
May 27, 2010 12:00 AM
You can't describe "The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity" without resorting to exclamation points, and lots of them. There's an actual pro-wrestling ring onstage! A video clip shows a woman in a burqa wielding a...
May 21, 2010 12:00 AM
In "Restoration," her first major play since her 2000 Broadway hit "Dirty Blonde," Claudia Shear has written herself some lascivious, sexed-up action. "I wish I could lick you clean," Shear's character, Giulia, sighs...
May 20, 2010 12:00 AM
NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc.
nypost.com, nypostonline.com, and newyorkpost.com are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.
Copyright 2010 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy | Terms of Use
