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Articles by Victor Gluck, Editor-in-Chief

About Victor Gluck, Editor-in-Chief (1061 Articles)
Victor Gluck was a drama critic and arts journalist with Back Stage from 1980 – 2006. He started reviewing for TheaterScene.net in 2006, where he was also Associate Editor from 2011-2013, and has been Editor-in-Chief since 2014. He is a voting member of The Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle, the American Theatre Critics Association, and the Dramatists Guild of America. His plays have been performed at the Quaigh Theatre, Ryan Repertory Company, St. Clements Church, Nuyorican Poets Café and The Gene Frankel Playwrights/Directors Lab.

Ghosts

March 23, 2025

The new version by Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe uses contemporary and spare language but has made several events more literal as if not trusting modern audiences. The director has made the same mistake starting the play as a rehearsal in which we see the opening scene three times ranging from devoid of emotion to accomplished, which is both ineffective and pointless as it does not help us into the world of the play. The thrust stage by set designer John Lee Beatty (a room in unpainted wood, a single dining room table and mismatched chairs and a wall of French doors into a conservatory) is as stripped down and as spare as the language, a fitting place for a drama of tragic proportions, but does not offset the one- dimensional acting. The bland costumes mainly in black or white by Jess Goldstein straddle both the 19th and 21st centuries, seeming to want to have it both ways, but suggesting neither. [more]

Have You Met Jane Goodall and her Mother?

March 16, 2025

Who knew that a biographical play could be so witty, entertaining and charming? The latest EST/Sloan Project science play, Michael Walek’s "Have You Met Jane Goodall and Her Mother?" is one of the most enjoyable and enlightening comedies of the season. Using the actual facts of Goodall’s first trip to Tanganyika’s Gombe Stream Reserve in 1960 to observe chimpanzees in the wild, Walek creates a play that sticks close to the well documented facts but fills in the missing information with often amusing supposition. The title refers to the fact that the Tanganyika government (then ruled by the British) only allowed Jane to study in their game park as a woman alone if she had a chaperone – so she brought along her mother. Jane Goodall’s trip was arranging by famed palaeoanthropologist Louis Leakey for her to find the missing link between humans and chimps which she finally does just before the end of her four month first trip. [more]

Dakar 2000

March 13, 2025

The play moves by unexpected twists and turns which are both amusing and engrossing. We never do find out for certain if Dina is a spy or not. However, she does tell Boubs that she was stationed at the embassy in Dar Es Salaam when al-Quada terrorists blew up both the Kenya and Tanzanian American embassies killing 200 and wounding 4,000. As she lost all of her friends and colleagues, she has vowed to hunt down and bring to justice those responsible. [more]

La Gota Fria: The Cold Sweat

March 10, 2025

Anna Capunay has attempted to write a family drama in order to influence people to try alternatives to chemo and radiation. Unfortunately, in using her own family story, she has not thought out how to make this a convincing and persuasive play for others. Incidentally, the title comes from the song that singer Carlos Vives made famous in 1993 which literally refers to the weather, and not illness, though it may used metaphorically here as a cold front causing bad weather. [more]

Conversations with Mother

March 7, 2025

While the characters do not change much, they roll through the years dealing with the various crises with various levels of success. However, the play is peppered with one liners and zingers that make this one of the most entertaining plays this season. Under the polished direction of Noah Himmelstein, Aaron and Doyle get a great deal of mileage from these jokes, not all of them new, but all of them hilarious. [more]

On the Evolutionary Function of Shame

March 4, 2025

The author complicates the issue by bringing in autism (Margot) and Alzheimer’s (the unseen father of Adam 2 and Eve 2.) When asked if she would want her autism cured, Margot answers: “I might. Plenty of people would. I’m fine with who I am, but it’s also undeniable that the world only became truly accessible to me when I entered a specific tax bracket.” Ridding the world of Alzheimer’s wouldn’t help Adam and Eve’s father who is too far gone but might help the next generation. However, Adam feels betrayed by his sister’s research that would “give transphobic parents the option to prevent their kid from being trans before they are born.” He feels he is being elimin [more]

The Price

March 2, 2025

Arthur Miller has always been our major playwright of moral ambiguity, never more so than in his 1968 drama "The Price," now receiving its first Off Broadway revival. The metaphoric title refers both to the value of an attic of old furniture to be sold as well as the price paid by the choices that the characters have made. The fifth New York revival and the first production by the newly formed Village Theater Group directed by Noelle McGrath is both uneven at times and weakly cast, but Miller’s ultimately powerful play still makes its point. [more]

Garside’s Career

February 28, 2025

While Dickson’s production is elegant and pitch-perfect for its 1914 era, the characterizations are partly satiric and off base. While Daniel Marconi is fine as the designing, unprincipled and power-hungry Peter, he seems to be playing him as a comic character with a wink in his eye though there is no evidence in the play that Brighouse intended this. Madeline Seidman’s Margaret is rather bland, failing to show us what Peter first saw in her. As his mother, Amelia White is almost as ambitious and designing a social climber as her son. The most problematic characterizations are those of the aristocrats who are all played too broadly, rather than true to the period. As Lady Mottram, Melissa Maxwell is almost a gorgon out of Oscar Wilde rather than simply a high class snobbish member of the gentry. Sara Haider’s Gladys fails to give off the kind of signals that would tell Peter she is interested in him, while Avery Whitted as her brother Freddie is practically one of the those silly-ass men of leisure out of P.G. Wodehouse. [more]

Liberation

February 25, 2025

Bess Wohl’s latest play is the ambitious and engrossing "Liberation," her attempt to investigate the roots of the Women’s Liberation Movement back in the 1970s from a decidedly contemporary point of view. Calling it a “memory play,” she uses a narrator “Lizzie,” who tries to recreate the consciousness raising group her mother started back in 1970 in Ohio where she lived at the time. Complicating things for the viewer, Lizzie also plays her own mother (who also seems to be named “Lizzie”) in the flashbacks, showing us seven meeting from the many the group had in their weekly encounters back in the seventies. She also interviews the survivors now in the present about what they recall of those days as her mother has recently passed away and she is sorry she didn’t ask her more questions. [more]

My Man Kono

February 18, 2025

The world premiere of Philip W. Chung’s My Man Kono tells the fascinating but little known true [more]

No Reservation

February 16, 2025

Conceived, written and directed by Elizabeth Hess, "No Reservation" is a celebration of "the lost feminine to give voice to all who have been discarded, silenced and overlooked.” The performances by members of The Hess Collective are very intense and the language rises to the level of poetry. At a brief 60 minutes, the play does not overstay its welcome or become agitprop. While "No Reservation" has no solution or answer to the question of the female power overtaken by the patriarchy, it remains a tribute to women over the centuries. [more]

The Antiquities

February 15, 2025

Kristen Sieh and Amelia Workman in a scene from Jordan Harrison’s “The Antiquities” at [more]

Still

February 13, 2025

Mark Moses and Melissa Gilbert in a scene from Lia Romeo’s “Still” at The Sheen Center for [more]

Mrs. Loman

February 9, 2025

The play is not very consistent with life in 1949. It is unlikely that middle class married women cursed, smoked marijuana, quoted Simone de Beauvoir or engaged in affairs with other women. While the program notes by the playwright describe "Mrs. Loman" as a “feminist critique” of the Arthur Miller play and reveals that the author feels that the original “does not provide for a full female character,” Linda’s studying philosophy at Brooklyn College does not make for a feminist statement. In fact, Beauvoir’s "The Second Sex" which Linda quotes from was not published in English until 1953 which means Linda could not have been studying it in an American class in 1949. [more]

Kowalski

January 31, 2025

Robin Lord Taylor as Tennessee Williams and Brandon Flynn as Marlon Brando in a scene from Gregg [more]

Mindplay

January 21, 2025

When the audience enters the theater, they are asked to fill out a slip of paper with one word that has been on their mind. Part of the show is made up of audience participation and these slips of paper come into play. Another part of the show written by DePonto and Josh Koenigsberg recounts DePonto’s life with mentalism, his childhood, his memories, his studies and his discoveries about the mind. He begins by discussing the “memory palace,” the way in which the mind catalogs our memories. The remarkable set by Sibyl Wickersheimer which is revealed when a curtain is opened is a wall of 146 lockers which resemble the way the mind works. DePonto opens some of these and removes items while some of the lockers seem to have a mind of their own and open without his doing anything. [more]

300 Paintings

January 20, 2025

Not only are the paintings massive but they also cover all sorts of modern periods of art without Kissajukian having known their work (abstract work by Picasso, Matisse, Joan Miró, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Basquiat, etc.) After the show the audience is invited to experience his recent art work on display in four galleries in the theater while he remains available to answer questions. Not only are the paintings a kind of therapy for him, he also titles them with witty names and explanations, often having little to do with actual images. [more]

Show/Boat: A River

January 17, 2025

If only he had carried through on that idea. We will never know if this staging might have worked as Herskovits has sabotaged all that is best in the original and made it both more confusing and less entertaining. Originally produced with 27 actors, Herskovits has reduced the cast to ten with so much doubling that it is difficult to know who is who. At least one character (Parthy Hawkes) is sometimes played by two actresses simultaneously which does not make for coherency. While the majority of the characters are white, Herskovits has cast it mainly with Black actors who wear sashes across their chest identifying them as white which is distracting rather than edifying. If you have not seen one of the two famed movie versions recently, it is impossible to follow the story line. Some actors switch gender as well as character or race. [more]

Gypsy

January 14, 2025

Audra McDonald in a scene from George C. Wolfe’s production of “Gypsy” at the Majestic [more]

Cult of Love

December 26, 2024

Must you love your immediate family unconditionally if you know they drive you crazy? And must you show up for family gatherings like Christmas if it always evolves into a vicious fighting match? Is love nothing more than propinquity, that is biological closeness? Leslye Headland’s "Cult of Love" produced by Second Stage at Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theater, a searing comedy-drama, reminds us that most American plays other than Our Town are about dysfunctional families that make various levels of accommodation to their problems. The cast led by Zachary Quinto, Mare Winningham and David Rasche are consummately believable as a family who has seen too many Christmases devolve into shouting matches. [more]

Bashevis’s Demons: 3 Tales by Isaac Bashevis Singer

December 25, 2024

Typical of Singer stories about 19th century Polish Jewry, these three dramatizations combine Jewish mysticism and demonology with Baker as the narrator of two of the stories while also playing the demons in both (“The Mirror” and “The Last Demon.”) The third story published in English as “Cockadoodledoo” but here renamed “Thus Spake the Rooster” is performed by Seigel in two parts as the title character who seems to have supernatural powers. The evening is both directed and designed by Moshe Yassur and Beate Hein Bennett, both of whom worked on the Yiddish versions of Waiting for Godot and Death of a Salesman seen in New York under the auspices of The New Yiddish Rep. [more]

A Guide for the Homesick

December 17, 2024

Director Shira Milikowsky keeps increasing the tension as the 85-minute play peels away revelation after revelation. Each man has a guilty secret and may have betrayed a friend which is eating him up. Although there are never more than two men on Lawrence Moten III’s pitch perfect set for the rather shabby blue and white hotel room which suggests a dorm, we eventually witness and learn about two other stories that they are both stewing over: what happened between Teddy and Ed before Ed stormed out and Jeremy’s encounter in Uganda with Nicholas, a gay man in need of more than medical help. [more]

Duality

December 11, 2024

If one did not read Laura’s extensive program notes in the Playbill given out at the Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre at the A.R.T./New York Theatres, it would not be until three quarters of the way through that the play’s real theme becomes clear. In addition, the family tree is so complicated that the script uses two pages and lists almost as many off-stage characters as appear in the play. Of course, this is not available to audience members or to critics before they see the production. [more]

Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now!

December 4, 2024

The trio demonstrates that their voices are as supple and fine as they ever were. Each gets to play their best suit: Winokur’s loud, clarion voice, Bundy’s wry wit and Butler’s recounting her hilarious but painfully missed opportunities even though she has appeared in 12 Broadway shows and been nominated for the Tony Award. Their patter and narration is entertaining and hilarious and the musical numbers are both tributes to their careers as well as songs we have not heard them sing before. [more]

The Blood Quilt

December 2, 2024

Katori Halls’ "The Blood Quilt" is fine as a family drama about warring sisters who both love and resent the mother who has just died. However, as a story of secrets and revelations it takes a little too long to get where it is going. It could use more incidents and exposés to warrant its length which seems padded. Don’t blame the fine actresses who seem to be living their several roles. [more]

The Merchant of Venice (Arlekin Players Theatre)

November 30, 2024

There is much rewriting and updating plus uncalled for interpolation like speeches from 'Romeo and Juliet" for Jessica and one of Shakespeare’s sonnets (“My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun") as a rap for Lorenzo added to Act V, Scene 1. The play begins with T.R. Knight on mike as the host of “The Antonio Show” and then he sits behind a desk as the merchant of Venice, and interviews his friend Bassanio seated on a sofa as though this was The Tonight Show. With only eight actors, there are not enough to play all of the parts despite doubling, so that Antonio uses two red hand puppets to stand in for his colleagues Salarino and Salanio. [more]

Tammy Faye

November 27, 2024

Katie Brayben in a scene from Elton John’s new musical “Tammy Faye” at the Palace Theatre [more]

Swept Away

November 26, 2024

Besides the fact that many know the story of the Essex (later told in Melville’s "Moby Dick") or the Mignonette told in The Avett Brothers’ album of the same name, Logan has made his main characters totally generic without given names. We learn too little about each for them to be three-dimensional characters: the Mate, cynical and corrupt; the Captain, at the end of a long career, melancholy and philosophical; Big Brother, religious and judgmental, and Little Brother, innocent and curious. A knife is flashed soon after the survivors find themselves on the lifeboat and we know how that will end. Just like the voyage of the whaling ship, their time on the lifeboat is a waiting game: how long can they survive and who will be the first to go? [more]

Strategic Love Play

November 24, 2024

How can you make a new play about a couple on a blind date in a bar interesting for today’s jaded audience? In "Strategic Love Play," British playwright Miriam Battye makes them play games as well as dislike each other as soon as they meet. Under Katie Posner’s direction Heléne Yorke ("The Other Two," "Masters of Sex") and Michael Zegen ("The Penguin," "The Marvelous Mrs. Meisel") are able to keep up the startling interactions between them for the 90 minutes of the play. The play covers several arcs from dislike to interest to boredom to acceptance to disbelief. [more]

Babe

November 23, 2024

Arliss Howard and Marisa Tomei in a scene from The New Group’s production of Jessica Goldberg’s [more]

Maybe Happy Ending

November 20, 2024

Helen J Shen and Darren Criss in a scene from the new musical “Maybe Happy Ending” at the [more]

King Lear (The Shed)

November 17, 2024

Firstly, the play has been shortened to two hours without any intermissions, when most recent productions have been three and a half hours with one intermission. This makes all of the events seem to take place too soon, one on top of the other, so that the sense of a world turned upside down is never felt in the production’s rush to the end. There is little sense of turning “the wheel of fortune” spoken of several times in the play. All the actors including the 63-year-old Branagh in the title role seem too young for their parts. While Lear describes himself as “a very foolish fond old man,” in fact, in this production he is a very vigorous and hearty leader, though capricious in his decisions. The supporting cast though excellent in their diction and authoritative in their roles seem lacking in technique to make the roles both interesting and their own. The low-key characterizations damage the play’s violence and viciousness. [more]
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