One of the best scenes in Close Up Space at City Center happens in the first few minutes. Paul, an exacting book editor (David Hyde Pierce), copy edits a letter from his daughter's headmaster. He slashes the equivocations and boils the missive down to one line.

"I emaciate prose and...

The euro may be playing havoc with Spain's economy, but someone forgot to tell Madrid. A vibrant, beautiful city, it is one of the most exciting destinations in Europe. Pedro Almodóvar's films defined Madrid for American moviegoers -- and his portrait...

The hotel room is tacky. The English seaside town is drenched in rain. And the two misfits desperate for a romantic escape reek of pathos. They also make for great theater. Kissing Sid James, part of 59E59 Theaters Brits Off-Broadway fest, is a sweet play that exposes the longings...

Arguing about proper English usage has been going on for centuries. Language mastery is essential for understanding and communication. Yet the mistakes, particularly now, make for great cable TV fodder. Who can forget President George W. Bush saying: "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" (It may be...

Middle-class frustrations are an Alan Ayckbourn specialty -- and in his 75th play, Neighborhood Watch, now at 59E59 Theaters, he posits a plausible story with unexpected results. Mild-mannered Martin (Matthew Cottle) and his efficient sister Hilda (Alexandra Mathie) have moved into the Bluebell Hill development, just a field away from...

Written in 1904,The Cherry Orchard, Chekov's last play, feels wholly modern. Now at the Classic Stage Company, its issues of class, money and romantic ruin seem timeless. A family of Russian aristocrats, led by Madame Ranevskaya (a superb Dianne Wiest) has been doomed by scandal and financial ineptitude. Destroyed by...

Cross-cultural misunderstandings can be funny, but they underscore a larger point: It's hard to bridge the divide. Language can only take one so far; the nuances of speech, never mind social expectation, are mighty. Which makes David Henry Hwang's new play Chinglish, now at the Longacre, funny and interesting, but...

Seminar has one overarching reason for being on Broadway: Alan Rickman. With his unmistakably sardonic voice and Harry Potter celebrity, he draws audiences into the Golden Theater. As Leonard, the once-celebrated writer turned fiction teacher, he drips with contempt for his students' works. He is able, inexplicably, to diagnose the...

"It's extraordinary how potent cheap music can be," muses Amanda (Kim Cattrall) to Elyot (Paul Gross) her former husband. They meet, five years after their divorce, at a swanky French resort. Each is on a second honeymoon. Soon their passion is rekindled, and they drop their new spouses with cheerful...

Family dysfunction is always a rich source of drama. Just ask the Wyeths of Other Desert Cities, now at the Booth Theater. In this rich, Republican family, a Nancy-Reagan-like Polly (a superb Stockard Channing) and actor-turned-ambassador Lyman (Stacy Keach) spar with their two liberal children, TV producer Trip (Thomas Sadoski)...

Steve Jobs was a genius and showman. Apple products revolutionized the way we live, making the company and its co-founders legendary. As storyteller Mike Daisey notes in The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs: "If you control the metaphor, you control the world."

It's Daisey's mission to critique that...

The Submission at the Lucille Lortel Theater, should submit to reality: There is nothing at stake in this faux drama. And the premise is dated: The Humana Festival accepts a play by Shaleeha G'ntamobi about a black mother and son in the projects. It's moving. It's important. And it's --...

Corruption and greed resonate in every age. Though Terence Rattigan's Man and Boy was written in 1963, it seems ripped from today's headlines. Set in the Depression in 1934, a charming but nefarious global financier Gregor Antonescu (Frank Langella) is scheming to save his multinational empire.

But the real...

When Ionesco debuted The Bald Soprano in 1950, he helped usher in the theater of the absurd. The avant-garde style he called the "anti-play," later embraced by Beckett and Albee, is a smart choice to kick off the Pearl Theatre's new season at City Center. Hal Brooks directs with vigor,...

The revival of Follies is perfection. One of Stephen Sondheim's most moving scores, it features two remarkable stars -- Bernadette Peters and Jan Maxwell -- and an extraordinary meditation on longing and regret. Now at the Marquis Theater, the production is a glorious reminder that musicals need not be draped...

Amid the various public remembrances of 9/11, Richard Nelson's Sweet and Sad offers a personal meditation on loss. Now at the Public Theater, the play, the follow-up to last year's That Hopey Changey Thing, pays a second visit to the Apple family, this time on 9/11/11.

The familial squabbles,...

It's no coincidence that Olive, the cranky Jewish actress at the center of Charles Busch's latest play, is funny -- in an acidly bitchy kind of way. She's the last renter in a Kips Bay co-op, a woman who bemoans her neighbors and fading career in equal measure. If kvetching...

Theater fans have admired her work for decades; now they can get the inside story. Actress Joan Copeland, whose worked has spanned theater, film and television, is starring in the autobiographical Joan's Show for two nights: August 15 and August 18 at the Acorn Theater on Theater Row.

Copeland...

Incorporating traumatic events on stage is tricky. In the case of The Shoemaker at the Acorn Theater, it's handled with care. An Italian Jew relieves the horrors of his childhood in fascist Italy on 9/11. The touching play, by Susan Charlotte, stars Danny Aiello as the shoemaker, a sensitive,...

Judy Gold is aptly named. She has mined her childhood angst for comedic gold, seen through the prism of classic 1970s sitcoms in The Judy Show, now at the DR2 Theater. A laugh-out-loud riot, it packages decades of Gold's kooky, crazy and occasionally poignant memoir into a clever, insightful 80-minute...