http://www.nypress.com/articles.sec-23-1-24_7-theater.html A stripped-down production of a musical can reveal hidden depths and new layers if the show is right. For example, Sweeney Todd and Company both benefited from a less-is-more approach. Ragtime, however, does not.]]> Not until Children at Play has ended does one realize just how much the cast of Jordan Seavey’s promising (but ultimately disappointing) play has done to make the black comedy seem like the best new show in ages. Led by Susan Louise O’Connor, fresh from her rave reviews in Blithe Spirit on Broadway, the eight actors and director Scott Ebersold all manage to smooth over the rough patches of Seavey’s script about life in high school. Not until after the applause has died down does the realization come that Seavey bit off more than he can chew. Among his plot points is the fallout from Chernobyl, eating disorders, teenage sexuality, molestation and the extent to which we’ve failed the next generation. Some of these ideas fit more organically into his story of five gifted and talented students than others (the eating disorder is mentioned with annoying infrequency), but the cast all manage to make the script seem fluid and natural.]]> Consider Finian’s Rainbow a much-needed palate cleanser. After all the Sturm und Drang this season has already seen (Hamlet, After Miss Julie, A Steady Rain, Memphis), it’s a relief to settle into a seat at the St. James Theatre for an evening spent with a stellar example of the Golden Age of musical comedy.]]> Every set designer for Off-Off-Broadway should drop what he’s doing and attend a performance of Astoria Performing Arts Center’s production of The Pillowman, which features a brilliant, all-purpose set from designer Stephen K. Dobay. Actually, everyone should drop what he’s doing for a subway ride to Queens, because it seems that shivery, riveting theater has abandoned Manhattan to take up residence in the other boroughs.]]> Theresa Rebeck, please know that we get it. We get that show business is a cruel, crazy and sometimes wonderful world, because we've heard it over and over and over again—usually from you. And The Understudy is a lesson in diminishing returns.]]> ROOTING FOR A couple to overcome their neuroses to be together is almost impossible when one half of them is as downright grating as Allison is in Embraceable Me. Her friend and occasional boyfriend Edward isn’t exactly a prize himself, but he certainly deserves better than the manipulative user Allison reveals herself to be over the course of Victor L. Cahn’s annoying two-hander.]]> Experimental theater director Robert Wilson adapts Les Liaisons Dangerous into a semi-accessible, stylized and brightly colored work. Isabella Huppert, the French actress I would most like to sleep with, stars.]]> Who could have known that the season's most unsettling Broadway experience would be amiable musical Memphis? Never mind the shrill Oleanna or the strained A Steady Rainfor sheer seat fidgeting, try the musical about integration set in the Civil Rights-era South.]]> British writers and performers are washing up on the shores of Manhattan over the next two months, and it has nothing to do with splashy Broadway imports that shamelessly show up the weaker American offerings. Instead of the Great White Way, they’ll be taking over the theater complex at 59E59 Theaters for the sixth annual Brits Off Broadway festival, the yearly reminder of just how shockingly talented British theater artists really are.]]> Let me ask you a question. What would you do if your daddy killed his own daddy and then fucked his mommy by mistake? OK, he didn’t know they were flesh and blood, but that’s rather carele]]> THANK YOU, Judith Ivey, for reminding me why I fell in love with the theater. After a brief break, the theater and I are firmly back together, and all because of the unlikeliest of offerings: a one-woman show about advice columnist Ann Landers.]]> Sienna Miller, despite some truly sublime film performances, is still primarily known for her outré fashion sense. Following her line of thinking in accepting a role in Patrick Marber’s adaptation of Miss Julie isn’t hard: a one-act set in 1945, in which her upper-class character dallies with a servant and runs the gamut from flirty to deranged? Perfect for showcasing her skills!]]> CHALK IT UP to another instance of a fabulous title coming before the idea for a show, because the funniest thing about The Diary of Anne Frankenstein is its name. Another in a long line of attempts at reviving the anarchic spirit of Charles Ludlam and other celebrated Downtown theater artists, Anne Frankenstein only succeeds in killing and hour and a half in the most excruciating way imaginable.]]> What a dreary lot the Cavendish family turns out to be in the dull revival of 1927’s The Royal Family. Director Doug Hughes and his design team have polished George S. Kauffman and Edna Ferber’s satire of the Barrymore acting clan to a high sheen, but all the Pledge in the world can’t disguise the fact that the play is imitation junk.]]> Anyone interested in Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show Wishful Drinking would do well to steer clear of her memoir of the same title, because the whole show is in there. Having read the book prior to seeing the show, I can attest that only a few of Fisher’s anecdotes benefit from her martini dry delivery. What mostly remains charming in its move from page to stage, however, occasionally annoys as the evening wanders towards its second hour.]]> From the privilege of my front row seat, I smirked as a woman exiled herself to the back of the full house, not being able to sit with the rest of her friends. “Poor bastard,” I whispered,]]> One can accuse David Mamet of many things, but being fluffy never seemed like a remote possibility—until the Atlantic Theatre Company chose to produce Two Unrelated Plays by David Mamet.]]> No one in the audience at A Steady Rain bought tickets thinking, “Oh, yes! The new Keith Huff play!” This season’s hot ticket started off hot thanks to the presence of superstars Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman, and then stayed hot as its sold-out status made it a status symbol. Attending the show is as much an exercise in vanity as an exercise in star gazing.]]> Why isn’t Ashley Austin Morris a star yet? After co-appearing as Charles Busch’s vengeful daughter in Die Mommie Die! and stealing the show in Fringe offering Paper Dolls, she’s toiling away in Tony Glazer’s melodramatic thriller In the Daylight—and I grow impatient for her to appear in a show worthy of her talents.]]> Lucy Thurber’s Killers and Other Family, in which the past and present collide for the dazed and battered refugee of a rural Massachusetts upbringing, is a tense, frightening one-act play that never quite rings true. ]]>