★★★☆☆ Playwright Ching is close to getting her California-based drama on the right contemporary path
Off-Broadway
Dying City: Lovers, Brothers and Other Strangers
★★★☆☆ Second Stage Theater revives Christopher Shinn’s intimate play tracing personal struggles in the Iraq War’s early stages
Dying City: Puzzling Out a Significant Mystery About Love and War
★★★☆☆ Christopher Shinn directs the Second Stage revival of his Pulitzer-nominated drama
Underground Railroad Game: Unorthodox and Provocative Classroom Studies
★★★★☆ Race and sex are smartly studied in a delightfully adventurous play
Underground Railroad Game: Learning From History, Bearing Its Weight
★★★☆☆ The acclaimed play looking at slavery’s enduring legacy returns to Ars Nova
Something Clean: A Child’s Mess, A Mother’s Burden
★★★★☆ Kathryn Erbe is radiant as a middle-aged matron seeking a fresh start after crushing trauma
Something Clean: A Woman Wounded By a Crime She Did Not Commit
★★★☆☆ Kathryn Erbe anchors Selina Fillinger’s earnest new drama about a sex crime
Chita Rivera: The Cabaret Act of This Year and Other Years? You Bet
★★★★★ She’s 86 but hardly 86ed in a jubilant celebration of an on-stage life
Continuity: A Lighter Look at Making a Movie Changes into Darker Realities
★★★☆☆ Rachel Chavkin of Hadestown fame directs a slight yet thoughtful comedy by Bess Wohl
Octet: How Modern Technology Makes Us Mad, In Exuberant Song
★★★★☆ Dave Malloy delivers a powerful new musical that’s too thoughtful for Broadway