by Carol Rocamora   “The least predictable of living playwrights”… “One of the sharpest and most restless theatre imaginations in the world…” … “Her topics defy categorization…” These are only a few of the critical comments over the years praising  the provocative, prolific Caryl...

  by Carol Rocamora   Flocks of feathery birds are swarming over Brooklyn this month. Yes, believe your eyes.  They’ve migrated from the ancient theatre of Epidaurus, Greece, landing in St. Ann’s Warehouse and stirring up a dramatic storm. Nikos Karathanos’s wild revival of The...

    by Carol Rocamora     It’s been a season of strong women against great odds– from Albee’s aging matriarch in Three Tall Women to Medoff’s deaf protagonist in Children of a Lesser God  to desperate Yerma fighting sterility at the Park Armory. And now we have a heroine...

  by Carol Rocamora     A magnificent specter is stalking the stage of the Public Theatre.  It’s the ghost of a king called Mlima, whose domain was once the Kenyan wilds.   He’s an elephant, you see – and a majestic one. And he reigns supreme – even in death – in a...

  by Carol Rocamora     Brace yourself for Billie Piper’s anguished performance in Yerma, now playing at the Park Avenue Armory.  Brutal in its emotional nakedness, it will drive a stake right through your soul. Director Simon Stone has done a radically reimagined adaptation of...

  by Carol Rocamora   Three exceptional productions shine on London stages this spring.   1 – Network at the Royal National Theatre “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”  You remember that famous cry from Network, Paddy Chayevsky’s 1976 film about the power...

  by Carol Rocamora   It takes an actress of magnitude and majesty to tackle the role of “A” in Three Tall Women, Edward Albee’s devastating drama about aging. And that role has found its match in Glenda Jackson, the British actress who was born to play it. Jackson, celebrated star...

  by Carol Rocamora   “I don’t have a history. I don’t have a heritage. I don’t know who I am!” Such is the existential cry of Akeem, the protagonist of Hammaad Chaudry’s compelling family drama called An Ordinary Muslim. It’s an anguished cry about Pakistani identity in Great...

  by Carol Rocamora   The noble revival of A Soldier’s Play now running at the Gene Frankel Theatre resonates powerfully on several levels. It brings back to pulsating life the celebrated Pulitzer-prize winning drama by Charles Fuller that launched the careers of some of our finest...

  by Carol Rocamora   There are lots of ways to tell a story in the theatre. But there are few as arresting and haunting as the way Adrienne Kennedy tells her new tale at the Theatre for a New Audience. After a nine-year hiatus, this celebrated American playwright (now 86) has...

  by Carol Rocamora   She’s back! Eve Ensler – playwright, performer, activist, force-of-nature – returns to the New York stages with a one-woman show that blows through the Manhattan Theatre Club like a tsunami. And what a wondrous storm it is! Who can forget The Vagina...

  by Carol Rocamora   A bare stage, a set of gilded chairs, a pair of huge mirrors, and presto – the remarkable life and times of Sergei Diaghilev are conjured up before our eyes. And a turbulent life it was, as embodied by Douglas Hodge in Terrence McNally’s arresting new bio-drama...

    by Carol Rocamora     An apocalyptic vision, infused with hope? Hard to imagine – that is, until you see The Children, Lucy Kirkwood’s astonishing new play at the Manhattan Theatre Club. From the moment the play opens – with the ominous image of a woman standing in a...

  by Carol Rocamora   There’s something for everyone in London’s whirlwind winter season. And don’t worry – if you can’t make it over till after the holidays, these fine theatre offerings will still be there in January (when hotel prices are lower).   On the West End, the...

by Carol Rocamora     Whether or not you’re a sports fan, you’ll be mesmerized by the moves of a soccer team called “The Wolves.” They’re warming up right now as if their lives depend on it, in the eponymous new play that just blazed open at Lincoln Center. This is no ordinary...

    by Carol Rocamora   As theatre legends go, Joseph Papp (1921-1991) looms large. This visionary champion of “theatre for the people” founded the free New York Shakespeare Festival in 1954, kept it alive against all odds, and expanded it into the mighty Public Theater with...

    by Carol Rocamora    “This is a story of kings, or what passes for kings these days…” So goes the opening line of Junk, Ayad Akhtar’s riveting morality tale of money and greed and American values in the 1980s. And who might these royals be, you ask? Why, none other than...

          by Carol Rocamora    Just when you think “you’ve seen it all” on the topic of drug addiction and recovery, along comes a play that blows the top of your head off.   That’s what People, Places & Things is doing to audiences at St. Ann’s...

  by Carol Rocamora   If you see smoke rising on East 4th Street, it’s coming from inside La MaMa. There, flames of passion and protest are being generated by one of the bravest theatre companies on earth. Belarus Free Theatre – the only theatre in Europe banned by its government on...

      by Carol Rocamora     “Problem play?” What “problem play?!!” Leave it to the adventurous Elevator Repair Service company to take a challenging Shakespearean text like Measure for Measure, one that has long confounded scholars (not to mention directors), and turn...

  by Carol Rocamora   He’s grotesque. He’s deformed. He’s dangerous. He’s the most charismatic character you’ve seen on stage in years, and you can’t resist him. You’re drawn to this repulsive, fascinating creature – and you’re ashamed. Such is the seductive power of Lars Eidinger’s...

  by Carol Rocamora   The power of The Siege, Freedom Theatre’s heartrending account of the 2002 Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Bethlehem, is that it is told not with rage or rancor, not to punish or vindicate – but to remind us of the tragedy of an ongoing, seemingly endless...

    by Carol Rocamora     The key to appreciating Suzan-Lori Parks’s wildly original Red Letter Plays is knowing that she’s a jazz musician as well as a writer. As she herself explains, she’s done a “riff” or “contrafact” of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, that...

by Carol Rocamora Caution: Enter At Your Own Peril…. That’s the sign they should place on the marquee of the Hudson Theatre. Those of you already traumatized by the Trump era should be warned that some of what happens inside may be too frighteningly familiar. 1984, the long-awaited stage...

      by Carol Rocamora     An onion isn’t a stage prop you’re used to seeing in the theater, is it? (And a large white one, yet.)   But as carried by Luda, immigrant wife and mother, throughout Napoli, Brooklyn, an intense new play by Meghan Kennedy at the Laura...