By Marilyn Lester   Who can know what passes through the mind of a person near death, especially those under the influence of mind-altering drugs? Irish playwright Marina Carr has one version, and it isn’t pretty. This proclivity for darkness should come as no surprise to...

  By Marilyn Lester     Irish playwright, Conor McPherson, who favors the mystical and the supernatural, has written a gem of a play in The Seafarer, and The Irish Repertory Theatre has clearly outdone itself in mounting it. Just about every aspect of the production hits a...

  By Samuel L. Leiter   Admissions, by Jonathan Harmon (Bad Jews), is one of those provocatively electric plays that, even as it bugs you with disagreeable ideas, annoying characters, or dramatic contrivances, nonetheless holds you firmly in its grip because you feel you’re watching...

    By Beatrice Williams-Rude   Brian Friel’s play, The Home Place, looks at what constitutes home—to the heart. The wealthy landowner, Christopher Gore, a kindly man with good intentions, refers to his Irish estate as his home, yet yearns for a more ancient habitat in Kent. ...

    By Joel Benjamin   My heart dropped a couple of inches as I stood outside the Lucille Lortel Theatre in the West Village awaiting the start of the new musical, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical. More than half the audience pouring into the theatre were kids,...

By Beatrice Williams-Rude   The Changeling, a Jacobean drama, is being given an elegant production by the Red Bull Theater. First, to explain a term easily confused with similar-sounding terms: Jacobites were supporters of King James I of England who was also King James VI of Scotland,...