http://www.nypress.com/articles.sec-23-1-theater.html Staged in the reliably uncomfortable blackbox at 59E59 Theaters and hosted by a smarmy guy who tries so hard to be laidback and cool that you instantly loathe him, LoveSick or Things That Don’t Happen is an awkward experience, at best.]]> It’s hard to argue that we live in exciting times. They may be rife with amazing capabilities or with unbelievable challenges, but either way, the times, they are a-full of dramatic possibility. So why can’t Red Fern Theatre Company document them with a more rewarding play than Created Equal?]]> Forget GRE scores, spell-checking personal essays or even worrying about what font to use in your application. For anyone looking to score admission to a prestigious grad school program, the results are entirely out of the applicant’s hands. At least that’s what Inadmissible, the amusing if sometimes obvious comedy running at Canal Park Playhouse, will have you believe.]]> The major problem with this production of Wit is its misguided raison d’etre, star Cynthia Nixon.]]> The heroes at the heart of Erin Browne’s Menders, now playing at downtown’s Judson Gym, exist in an alternate future where a select few must live on one side of a protective wall. ]]> Daniel Talbott’s Yosemite, an underwritten, underwhelming, over-wrought new play inexplicably produced by Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre and lugubriously directed by Pedro Pascal.]]> Sometimes I love my job. It’s my great pleasure to direct you to Gob Squad’s Kitchen (You’ve Never Had It So Good), the first must-see of an unusually busy 2012.]]> Family is a funny thing—especially in Joel Drake Johnson’s The Fall to Earth at 59E59 Theaters. Estranged mother and daughter Fay (Deborah Hedwall) and Rachel (Jolie Curtsinger) fractiously reunite to complete a gruesome task.]]> Plays lit by candlelight are reliably murderous on one’s consciousness—but never more so than in the Broadway revival of Athol Fugard’s intimate three-hander The Road to Mecca. Stranding both Fugard’s story and actors Rosemary Harris, Carla Gugino and Jim Dale on a giant stage to chatter away for two-and-a-half hours with a marked lack of dramatic conflict is a recipe for nap-taking.]]> Leakey’s Ladies would have an ambitious mission even if it weren’t an Off-Off-Broadway show playing the small Dixon Place and with a limited budget. But Gretchen Van Lente’s look at three very worthy women, with an experimental structure and a multimedia design that errs on the side of the amateurish, bites off more than it seems to be able to chew.]]> The worst aspect of the super strain of SARS that is terrorizing the South in Matthew Maguire’s new drama Instinct is that it’s targeting the wrong people.]]> A stylish and snappy one-man show conceived by and starring Tobias Wegner, Leo boasts a one-joke premise that finds Wegner sliding around on the stage in various postures that translate into gravity-defying feats of acrobatics thanks to a hidden camera]]> Anyone with a tight budget and a hankering to see Chinglish, David Henry Hwang’s Broadway comedy about how radically—and hilariously—different American and Chinese cultures are, should head to the Off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre, where a scaled-down version of Chinglish called Outside People is being performed.]]> Those unfamiliar with the blue-collar Philly suburb that gives Bridesburg its title might understandably mistake Victor Kaufold’s new play for a wedding-day romp or a satire of the pomp and circumstance involved in nuptial preparations. They would be in for a rude awakening. ]]> This past year has seen some memorable moments on stage (Playwrights Horizons’ offerings; Nina Arianda on Broadway—twice!), but they all pale in comparison to the amount of wrongheaded dreck that theatergoers had inflicted upon them. As everyone gazes with holiday-glazed eyes at glasses half full, let’s look at the other half of that glass, containing these distressing trends.]]> Manhattan Theatre Club has given theatergoers a lump of coal this holiday season with Close Up Space, a tedious new comedy-drama about editing, the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, feminist literature and family failures. That the cast includes pros like David Hyde Pierce and Rosie Perez makes the whole 80 minutes just that much sadder.]]> The proprietors of St. Ann’s Warehouse couldn’t have known they’d be striking while the iron was blazing hot when they opted to produce a revival of Enda Walsh’s intoxicating 1999 play, Misterman. But it’s unlikely anyone is surprised that Walsh is enjoying a moment, as this solo show makes his talents for evocative characterizations patently clear. ]]> The disconnect between our perceptions of what the past was like (no Internet? No problem!) and its actual, prickly reality is explored in Maple and Vine, the uproarious, problematic new comedy by Jordan Harrison at Playwrights Horizons. ]]> The original book to the 1965 On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is widely acknowledged as abysmal—but it is solely on the basis of that show and The Apple Tree that Barbara Harris’ towering status as an icon of musical theater rests. Not bad for a show that is frequently dismissed, despite its gorgeous score by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane. Director Michael Mayer and playwright Peter Parnell, however, thought they had the solution to the original, and have given audiences a radically reworked version that is just as flawed.]]> Derby Day covers much the same ground popularized by Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County: adults behaving badly and tossing out family secrets with the aim of a javelin thrower. It’s not an entirely polished work, though talented playwright Samuel Brett Williams has mercifully truncated the formula by both running time and family size. And thanks to both his savvy and an extremely capable cast, what could have felt like a lazy retread of familiar terrain actually plays as a welcome voyage to undiscovered country.]]>