★★☆☆☆ Stephen Belber’s latest drama shuffles through a tiresome heap of cliches
Off-Broadway
The Convent: Modern-Day Women Go Soul Searching in a Medieval Milieu
★★☆☆☆ Jessica Dickey’s latest play scarcely achieves its intriguing possibilities
Eddie and Dave: Running with the Devil, in Drag
★★★★☆ A storied rock & roll rivalry is revisited hilariously, with a gender twist (and tenderness), in Amy Staats’s new play
Eddie and Dave: Amy Staats Salutes Van Halen With a Half-Salute
★★★☆☆ A musical spoof that amuses for a while before becoming a typical rock-band demise tale
Colin Quinn Red State Blue State: Snarking Over America’s States of Disunion
★★★☆☆ A curmudgeonly humorist stands up to gripe about various aspects of our polarized society
About Alice: Calvin Trillin’s Fond Portrait of the Woman He Loved
★★★★☆ A writer provides a tender account of his wife, who did more than merely face up to cancer
Trick or Treat: A Bold Play About Dementia Gets Less and Less Bold
★★☆☆☆ Playwright John Neary presents a Northeastern family in as much distress as the proceedings are
Behind the Sheet: Charly Evon Simpson Smart on Women’s Problems
★★★★☆ How a surgeon in the South uses slave women to solve complicated labor developments
LaBute New Theater Festival: Reasons to be Wary, of Modern Life
★★★☆☆ Three new one-act plays by Neil LaBute find men and women grappling with contemporary and historical issues
LaBute New Theater Festival: A Sharp Playwright Assumes a Gentler Style
★★★☆☆ A trio of new plays presents a Hitler apologist, a bad date, and one self-absorbed heart-breaker