Reviews for City Theatre Company Performances
Review: The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 by City Theatre Company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on May 10, 2023
A treat for those familiar with 1930's movies, THE MUSICAL COMEDY MURDERS OF 1940 was stuffed with odd characters and over-the-top dialogue. Deft casting rewarded by evoking giggles and guffaws.
The time: December 1940. The city: Chappaqua, New York. The scene: The Library. The characters: Helsa Wenzel, Elsa Von Grossenknueten, Michael Kelly, Patrick O'Reilly, Ken De La Maize, Nikki Crandall, Eddie McCuen, Marjorie Baverstock, Roger Hopewell, and Bernice Roth. Or, put another way, a maid, an eccentric mansion-owner, a cop, a singer, a director, a chorus-girl, a comedian, a Broadway producer, a composer, and a lyricist walk into the room . . . …
Review: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by City Theatre Company
by Brian Paul Scipione
Published on May 14, 2022
I always wonder if Albee suggests that this night of mayhem is a once-in-a lifetime experience of Martha and George play this routine every chance they get. I now know that I, for one, am afraid of Virginia Woolf.
One of the commonplace declarations about the perpetually popular plays of Shakespeare is that his subjects are timeless. Another view, less often proposed, is the simple observation that they are really good (despite sometimes being something of a slog for modern audiences). Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is exactly that. Describe the play as you will—wonderful, exceedingly clever, intellectually moving, disturbing, daunting, outright scary—but at its core it is very high quality. It is …
Review: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by City Theatre Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on April 24, 2022
City Theatre's production Edward Albee's four-character masterpiece begins with an absurdist trope that sets a framework for the aches, pains, and humanity portrayed by the talented cast.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is Edward Albee’s 1962 mind-bending and reality-warping play about the nasty interiors of marriages when pretense falls away and somebody, anybody, takes a wrench to the machinery that just sits there smoking. If it explodes, it will scar your retinas. That’s the effect the actors strive for, anyway. Albee plays are always good for that. Wear shades. The play is canonical of the twentieth century Age of …
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Review: Wonder of the World by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on October 25, 2021
WONDER OF THE WORLD could have easily been dedicated to women as the wonders of the world. Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire makes every male character hapless, clueless, or inept, while each of the women is wonderfully focused and sure.
David Lindsay-Abaire's farce Wonder of the World echoes the proud claim of promoters of Niagara Falls, which is the desperation destination for the protagonists. They're an odd couple (think of Neil Simon's Oscar Madison and Felix Unger), two women who meet up on a Greyhound bus in route to Niagara. Cass, the exuberant blonde, has a long list of "must do" items accumulated over seven years of deeply humdrum marriage to Kip, her dully earnest, …
Review: The Tempest by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Published on July 20, 2019
George Kendall's cool Prospero sets up the arc of his own seeming success. The magician could be perceived as the dealer who has stacked the cards, while Surgener's Caliban, an expressive but desperate loser, could be the protagonist in quite a different story.
The Tempest never disappoints. Perhaps this late play was indeed Shakespeare's farewell to the stage. That view is probably just sentimental pudding, for he was a working playwright, popular but not really idolized until after he'd been gone for a while. But this fantasy on an enchanted isle is easy to swallow, for Shakespeare gives us the magician, the magic, and the fairy sprite yearning to be free, just as exiled Duke of Milan Prospero …
Review: The Grapes of Wrath by City Theatre Company
by David Glen Robinson
Published on August 19, 2018
Steinbeck's semi-articulate characters gain insight through loss after loss. Their lives seem as enormous as Ansel Adams’ mountains and forests, yet quaking beneath an overpowering and impersonal universe. City's production remains dreadfully true to Steinbeck's vision and sorrow.
Onstage now at City Theatre on the east side is a play about the struggle to be human. Yes, City Theatre has undertaken an adapted stage presentation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The well-known tragedy continues to offer generations of Americans sometimes-harsh lessons on the human condition. Steinbeck’s canonized 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath places uneducated regional migrants at the epicenter of the rending social upheaval of the Great …