★★★★☆ Carmel Dean, Jack Cumming III, Dick Scanlan, Scott celebrate the making of the poet’s prize-winning poem
Off-Broadway
The Niceties: Inside Ivy Walls, No Room For Empathy
★★☆☆☆ Two women separated by age and race find no common humanity in Eleanor Burgess’s dispiriting new play
Lewiston/Clarkston: A Western Landscape, Majestic and Tragic
★★★★★ Samuel D. Hunter surveys the America we still don’t know well enough in his beautiful, haunting two-part play
Lewiston/Clarkston: Westward Ho! 200 Years Later
★★★★☆ Two separate but thematically related plays by Samuel D. Hunter make for a uniquely special dramatic event
India Pale Ale: Immigrant Punjabi Drama Makes for Pale Ale
★★★☆☆ Jaclyn Backhaus fights back at current domestic policies to mixed but hopeful results
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: Kurt Vonnegut’s First Play Not Happy-Making
★★☆☆☆ The revival takes advantage of the Donald J. Trump environment but not well
School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play: Jubilantly Funny High School Days
★★★★☆ Jocelyn Bioh’s uproarious comedy returns to MCC
Plot Points in Our Sexual Development: In a Queer Relationship, Universality
★★★★☆ A careful, wry look inside a very specific relationship—and at how everyone grows up and figures themselves out
The Book of Merman: Merman, Mormon Spoof Down in the Depths
★☆☆☆☆ Leo Schwartz and DC Cathro may enjoy what they’ve written, but many others might not
Gloria: A Life: Around a Campfire With Gloria Steinem
★★★☆☆ Playwright Emily Mann, director Diane Paulus, and an all-female creative and production team join forces with journalist, author, and feminist icon Gloria Steinem