by Carol Rocamora   If only Oscar Hammerstein were alive today to see the Classic Stage Company’s thrilling revival of his Carmen Jones!   Like the rest of us, he’d marvel at the artistry and red-hot passion packed into that tiny theatre. Hammerstein’s compact...

  by Carol Rocamora   Brace yourself for a traumatic ride. Cyprus Avenue is one of those deceptive dramas that begins with a stock situation – a man in a psychiatrist’s office – but soon veers off the rails and crashes like a horrific train wreck. David Ireland’s explosive new play,...

  by Carol Rocamora   Every generation brings a new director to the world stage who changes the way we view the classics, whether it be Euripides, Shakespeare, or Moliere. Such praise belongs to the world-renowned Lev Dodin, artistic director of the Maly Drama Theatre of St....

  by Carol Rocamora   Elevator Repair Service, that devilish New-York-based company, is up to its tricks again – namely, hijacking existing written works and turning them into theatrical gold. Past source material has run the gamut from Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, to – of all...

    by Carol Rocamora     The history and future of humanity as a central dramatic theme? That’s a rather tall order for an 85-minute play, don’t you think? And yet, that’s exactly the challenge that writer and co-director David Byrne has embraced in The Secret Life of...

  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...