A talking circle for the resistance is happening at the Daryl Roth Theatre, where Gloria: A Life, a bio play about America’s most famous feminist, opened off-Broadway tonight. On the evening I attended, the discussion was led by Ms. Steinem herself,…
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Stockard Channing and Glenn Close Make Magic of Maternal Strife Off-Broadway: REVIEW
A shift in perspective makes a world of difference. Where and how we choose to look can radically alter how we make sense of ourselves and everything else. That’s the sweeping scope of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s intimate drama Apologia, titled after the m…
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‘What the Constitution Means to Me’ Is the Best Political Play of the Trump Era: REVIEW
When writer-performer Heidi Schreck was 15, she traveled the U.S. giving speeches about the Constitution for prize money that paid her college tuition. As an origin story, it sounds almost impossibly quaint. Who can imagine mustering any such civic z…
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Trans Representation Comes at a Price in ‘The Nap’ on Broadway: REVIEW
Two hours and change is time enough for a substantial snooze. Who couldn’t use one right about now? But if you’d rather spend as much time inside the Friedman Theatre, playwright Richard Bean’s The Nap quite bravely insists that its title relates to…
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Dangerous Nostalgia Gets a Glow Up in ‘Pretty Woman: The Musical’ on Broadway: REVIEW
‘Pretty’ isn’t always a compliment. It can also be code for what a woman is not — sharp, ambitious, or (heaven forbid!) ‘difficult.’ In the case of Vivian Ward, who has a hit movie and a new musical named in her honor, it also means she’s…
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New Musical ‘Be More Chill’ Is Like an Incel’s Answer to ‘Mean Girls’: REVIEW
If every high school dram-com is about fitting in, each one needs something to set it apart. Mean Girls has a riotous script full of sharply drawn characters; Dear Evan Hansen has an inspired score with a vivid emotional center. Be More Chill, a fren…
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New Go-Go’s Musical ‘Head Over Heels’ Is a Goddamn Queer Delight: REVIEW
A bride’s cockamamy paternity hunt was just crazy enough to make Mamma Mia! into a smash, launching a thousand jukebox copycats. Two decades later, The Go-Go’s are taking the opposite tack — toppling the patriarchy Head Over Heels in an queer fantasi…
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Boys Will Be Boys in ‘Straight White Men’ Starring Armie Hammer and Josh Charles: REVIEW
Armie Hammer and Josh Charles are horsing around, swatting at each other and throwing shapes with abandon, as the crowd titters in delight. A frame around the Helen Hayes stage bears a plaque classifying the species on display: Straight White Men, wh…
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Jesse Tyler Ferguson Is a Gay Neo-Con in Vacant ‘Log Cabin’ Off-Broadway: REVIEW
When we first meet Log Cabin’s central foursome — two couples, one lesbian and one gay, diverse as a Benetton ad — it’s 2012 and they’re not fully, as the kids might say, “woke.” Jordan Harrison’s new play, which stars Jesse Tyler Ferguson and opened…
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Idina Menzel Opens In Off-Broadway’s ‘Skintight,’ a Daddy-Twink Romance Where ‘Hot Is Everything’: REVIEW
Calvin Klein’s much publicized but short-lived romance with an adult film star less than half his age has become ripped-from-the-tabloids fodder for a new play by Joshua Harmon. Skintight, a witty but muddled satire of cultural fixation on youth and…
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