★★☆☆☆ A mash-up of fact and fiction shows that writing plays can be harder than rocket science
Off-Broadway
Popcorn Falls: Small-Town Drama, Played For Laughs
★★★☆☆ Christian Borle directs two other facile funny men in a play by James Hindman.
Oklahoma!: Bright Golden Haze (and Darkest Night) on the Meadow
★★★★☆ A brave and mostly successful rethinking of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic
Oklahoma!: The Great Musical in 2018 Whipping-Down-the-Plain Take
★★★★ Daniel Fish and fine 12-member cast, 7-musician band revitalize the Rodgers-Hammerstein classic
The Bacchae: Euripides’ Classical Tragicomedy of Wine, Women, and Wrong
★★★☆☆ Anne Bogart stages a 2,400 year-old Greek drama with a few modern notes
On Beckett: Clowning in the Dark
★★★★☆ Bill Irwin offers an exuberant homage to a master of bleakness
Final Follies: Something Old, Something New From A.R. Gurney
★★★☆☆ Primary Stages’ triptych of Gurney shorts—which includes the late playwright’s newest, “Final Follies”—comes up a bit short
Final Follies: Primary Stages Trips Over a Trio of A.R. Gurney Comedies
★★☆☆☆ Able staging and acting can do only so much with a master author’s minor material
Girl From the North Country: Souls Tangled Up In Blue, Bleak and Radiant
★★★★★ Depression-era Minnesotans find no shelter from their storms in Conor McPherson’s adaptation of Bob Dylan’s songs
Girl From the North Country: A Visit to Desolation Row With Bob Dylan
★★★★☆ Bob Dylan songs are artfully molded into a new musical of melancholy distinction