Anspacher Theater

The Ally

March 10, 2024

Itamar Moses’ 'The Ally" is a play of ideas not only torn from today’s headlines but tomorrow’s as well. Ostensibly dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian question on college campuses today, it also deals with censorship, anti-Semitism, racism, capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy and white supremacy. The play protagonist, a Jewish liberal teacher on a college campus, is asked to sign a social justice manifesto and finds that it challenges his political, marital, academic, American and Jewish beliefs. This is a good deal for one play to take on, possibly too much, but Lila Neugebauer’s production for The Public Theater almost gets all of it right for this provocative and heady play, with one caveat. [more]

Manahatta

December 14, 2023

Mary Kathryn Nagle’s "Manahatta" now at The Public Theater, just blocks from where most of the story takes place, is a fascinating combination of American history and recent events. Nagle who is a Native American has written a play that combines the Dutch purchase of the island of Manhattan in 1626 from the Delaware Lenapes with the Wall Street home-mortgage crisis of 2008 where many disenfranchised people lost their homes. She also includes the contemporary Lenape community living today in Anadarko, Oklahoma, after they had been evicted from their Texas reservation. While the three time-frames of the play run concurrently, they all come together in a devastating ending that indicts the capitalist system as well as how Native Americans have been treated in this country. [more]

Coal Country

March 17, 2020

For "Coal Country," an investigation into the April 5, 2010 West Virginia disaster at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine which killed 29 men, authors Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen based their documentary play on first person interviews with the families of many of the victims, sons, brothers, fathers, husbands, nephews. Powerful in the piling up of evidence and malfeasance just as they had done in "The Exonerated," the play undercuts its dramatic power by revealing the end of the story at the very beginning so that the ultimate court decision comes as no surprise. Nevertheless, the individual stories told by seven actors speaking the real words of family members are very compelling. [more]

A Bright Room Called Day

December 1, 2019

Maddeningly alternating between being an absorbing historical drama and a grating exercise in self-indulgence, "A Bright Room Called Day" is author Tony Kushner’s reimagining of his 1985 first play. “It never worked” states a character regarding the play. It still doesn’t, but parts of it are entrancing. In contrast to his gargantuan two-part opus, "Angels in America," this runs a tolerable two hours and 45 minutes including an intermission. [more]

White Noise

April 18, 2019

After she won the Pulitzer Prize for "Topdog/Underdog," one approached a new play by Suzan-Lori Parks with great expectations--expectations that are strongly rewarded by her latest work, "White Noise." While the title refers specifically to the hissing sound made by sleep machines, meant to lull and keep you asleep, it also hints at the many racist issues this new, smart work traffics in. [more]

Mother of the Maid

November 1, 2018

Jane Anderson’s "Mother of the Maid" would probably not be very compelling without Glenn Close’s Isabelle Arc as the play itself is following the dots in filling in the little that is known with mostly common historic and unsurprising details. (One exception is after Isabelle has seen the unicorn tapestries at the palace, she naively asks if there were any of the animals to be seen.) However, with Close who gives a constrained and moving performance the play becomes something else: a persuasive portrait of a mother and wife who has an awakening to the ways of the world based on what happens to her daughter. [more]

Fire in Dreamland

July 27, 2018

Built in 1904, Dreamland was considered the most elegant and ambitious of Coney Island’s amusement parks--until it burnt to a crisp in 1911. A new play by Rinne Groff, "Fire in Dreamland" is ostensibly about the disaster, in which no humans but most of the animals perished. But to add that it’s set a little more than a century later--in 2013, or some months after Super Storm Sandy wreaked havoc on the east coast--should begin to suggest that there’s more going on here than, unfortunately, ever meets the eye. [more]

The Low Road

March 20, 2018

Bruce Norris’ plays are so different from each other that you have to take his fingerprints to recognize his hand. His recent New York plays have dealt with racism and gentrification ("Clybourne Park"), politics ("Domesticated"), sexual mores ("The Qualms"), theories of time and space (A Parallelogram), and now in his latest production to reach NYC, "The Low Road" at The Public Theater, he offers a fascinating take on capitalism and the free market told as a picaresque and ribald 18th century tale of colonial America on the brink of statehood. Of course, its real target is today’s untenable global economic situation but his criticism is couched as an historical parable. [more]

Party People

December 3, 2016

The framework is a fictional fiftieth anniversary party given in a New York art gallery by collaborating media/visual/performing artists Malik “Mk Ultra” (Christopher Livingston) and Jimmy “Primo” (William Ruiz a.k.a. Ninja) to commemorate the creation of both the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords. Their interest is familial: Jimmy is the nephew of Tito (Jesse J. Perez), a former Young Lords Party member still involved with union organizing, and Primo is a “Panther Cub” as he is the son of a Panther member now in prison. They want to pay homage as well as reveal unspoken truths. Malik and Primo have created a video of the many former party members that they have interviewed that they plan on debuting at the event. The party with people who have not spoken for years will be a charged reunion. The troubled legacy of the two organizations is thoroughly explored in the course of "Party People." [more]

The Total Bent

June 6, 2016

Stew and Ms. Rodewald’s command of the musical genres of the 1960’s and 1970’s—gospel, Motown, soul, glam-rock, funk, R&B, blues, etc.—is astounding. The songs are organic extensions of the dialogue. In fact, this show could easily have been a straight drama or a sung-through opera. [more]