AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮✮ Stephen Adly Guirgis's Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train Signature Theatre | NYC directed by Mark Brokaw One man’s justice is another man’s crime. One man’s retribution is another man’s torture. One man’s saviour is another man’s devil. What we do to those on the other side of the law is a reflection on how we view ourselves and how we view morality. America is the home of the imprisoned and the yet-to-be-imprisoned. Liberty and Justice are not for all in this land. We like to

✮✮✮✮ Suzan-Lori Parks's The Red Letter Plays Signature Theatre | NYC directed by Jo Bonney | Sarah Benson An audience is usually prepared to experience a vast array of emotions when taking in a piece of theatre. If the theatre is especially good they’ll be caught off-guard by something that hits them in a way that nothing ever has - or perhaps something has struck them like that before and the audience member is brought back to that moment. When a play can do these things and

✮✮✮✮ Paula Vogel's Indecent Court Theatre | NYC directed by Rebecca Taichman Paula Vogel opens her show within the playbill in the form of a note to the audience. In this note she describes the purpose of theatre as a way to, “...wound our memory so we can remember.” This memory wounding then reminds us of past traumas and pain, which are then re-examined and perhaps resolved once the wound heals or at least that’s one way to interpret it. Indecent, Vogel’s newest play and lo

✮✮✮ Ayad Akhtar's The Invisible Hand New York Theatre Workshop | NYC directed by Ken Rus Schmoll Ventriloquising media-vilified terrorists could turn any author mealy-mouthed. Dave Eggers stumbled with his non-fiction book Zeitoun, which eulogised a New Orleans man whose wife has now spoken out over his violent stalking of her and her child. Here, Ayad Akhtar’s patchier follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced in 2012 moves the scene from a bourgeois dinner party to

✮✮✮✮✮ David Rabe's Sticks and Bones The New Group | NYC directed by Scott Elliott Some productions deal in subtleties – the mental landscapes shifting subtly as sunlight through passing clouds. The New Group’s revival of David Rabe’s 1971 play is one of them, making his unsettling evocation of a blind Vietnam veteran’s homecoming an intensely claustrophobic broadcast of interlocking jet-streams, atmospheres and gathering storms. Toting his kitbag and a white cane, David is of

✮ Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing Roundabout Theatre Company | NYC directed by Sam Gold Tom Stoppard's plays have an artifice that can charm and infuriate in equal measure. This revival of his 1982 work looks inward to a playwright's own box of tricks, and the damage they do when unleashed on their owner. Roundabout Theatre Company, which specializes in bringing British plays to Broadway, has done its best to brighten its dated, indoor firework fizzle with a star cast of Maggie

✮✮✮ 1/2 Share White's Annapurna The New Group | NYC directed by Bart DeLorenzo Paonia, Colorado. The plucking of an acoustic guitar blends with sizzling light as the aroma of sausages tickles your nostrils. A cluttered trailer, resembling an episode of The Hoarder Next Door, is situated amongst the snowy mountains’ vibrant chilly blue air, as complementary orange rays of hot sun radiate through its roof. Ulysses and Emma together, happily married. Until 20 years ago. Emma app

✮✮✮✮ Robert Schenkkan's All The Way Neil Simon Theatre | NYC directed by Bill Rauch So many of the biggest Broadway shows sell America somewhere else – fantasies of talking African lions, witches in Oz, French revolutionaries or Northern English drag queens. Robert Schenkkan’s bold new political drama, together with the newly revived classic Raisin in the Sun, hints at a more introspective mood – both look at the America of 50 years ago, at a time of national self-examination