Doug Hamilton

The Penitent

March 10, 2017

Perhaps because Mamet-regular Jordan Lage is so effective as Richard, the scenes between Charles and his own attorney prove the most effective. While Laura Bauer’s sensible costumes do all they can to make her seem real, Rebecca Pidgeon proves robotic as Kath, detracting from her character’s constant bewilderment. (Come to think of it, maybe it was a stylized choice for playing the part, because of Kath’s befuddlement and uncertainty, at every turn.) The last scene is set in a rehab room, where Kath has been confined, following a mental collapse or nervous breakdown. [more]

Hold On to Me Darling

March 31, 2016

In the hands of someone other than Timothy Olyphant, Strings McCabe might be a self-pitying monster too extreme to take seriously. However, this brilliantly accomplished actor has just the right amount of blarney to make Kenneth Lonergan’s "Hold On to Me Darling" one of the most satisfying plays in town. And you will learn a good deal about the lives of the rich and famous and how they get away with the antics they commit. [more]

Cloud Nine

October 23, 2015

What is most remarkable about Caryl Churchill’s time traveling comedy "Cloud Nine" is that this prescient play about sexual politics and repression is now 36 years old, though it could have been written this year. Still a challenging gender-bending play, it asks us how far we think we have come from the Victorians in our attitudes about sex and identity. Set among the British in Africa during the repressed 1879 in Act I and back in England in liberated London in 1979 in Act II, the characters switch roles, genders and ages in the course of the evening. It isn’t obvious until the second half where the play is headed or how brilliant Churchill has been. Cloud Nine (which proves not to be a nirvana for the characters) challenges a great many of our strictly held beliefs about the way the world is or should be. [more]

Guards at the Taj

June 21, 2015

Rajiv Joseph’s plays are filled with emotional or physical violence as in "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo," "Gruesome Playground Injuries" or "Animal out of Paper." His new play, "Guards at the Taj," being given its world premiere by Atlantic Theater Company, has both. Set in India in 1648, this riveting drama which works on many levels has been directed by Amy Morton, best known for her New York performances in Steppenwolf transfers to Broadway ("August: Osage County" and "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"), and features Omar Metwally and Arian Moayed who are always commanding. [more]

Posterity

March 30, 2015

In Doug Wright’s "Posterity" at the Atlantic Theater Company two monumental cultural figures of 19th century Norway lock horns in a battle of wits and sensibilities with tragic results. Wright, who seems to have a penchant for writing about real people (viz. "Quills," "I Am My Own Wife," and "Grey Gardens"), here, takes on Henrik Ibsen, monumental 19th century playwright, and sculptor Gustav Vigeland, forty years his junior. [more]

The Fortress of Solitude

November 7, 2014

Despite the novel's length of 511 pages, its focus on the music of its period would make this a natural for musicalization. The resulting show is an unusual stage work blending time and space, realism and magic, and exploring themes of race and gentrification, culture and self-discovery, fathers and sons, and how music defines the generation we live in. The music and lyrics in Friedman's magnificent and complex pastiche score includes pop, rock, rhythm & blues, soul, punk, hip-hop and heavy metal. While the musical doesn't entirely reach its goal as of now, it is most of the way to being an extraordinary new theater work. In defining a community and a generation through its music, it attempts to create a new form of musical. [more]