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Articles by Helen Shaw
'The Saviors' Review: Childlike Faith, Adult Betrayal
NEW YORK -- The Atlantic Theater Company's off-Broadway main stage is a converted Gothic Revival parish hall. When the Atlantic turned the hall into a stage back in the '90s, they kept its peaked wooden ceiling and air of contemplation. Now, for Bubba Weiler's play, "The Saviors," the little theater wants to be a church again. In Jack Serio's meticulous production, David Zinn's set exactly recreates a Roman Catholic chancel: altar, baptismal font, stained-glass windows.
'A Chorus Line' at 50-ish: Seeing Through Perfection to the Pain
PITTSFIELD, Mass. -- How much has "A Chorus Line" changed in 50 years? Or, rather, how much has it changed us? If you want to measure the musical against your memories, you could pop over to Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where director Alan Paul is celebrating its golden anniversary.
'Heated Rivalry,' 'Dukes,' 'Othello' and More Crowd-Pleasing Theater to See
'Big Feelings' A little infantilizing goes a long way in Ryan Drake's immersive play, in which the audience puts its adult concerns away to become a class of first graders. After we receive our name tags, we chat with our neighbors, practice counting by twos, draw a moment when we felt overwhelmed by our circumstances and sound out tricky words. Director Sammy Zeisel ensures that we're a little nervous -- I did not want to screw up counting -- while also learning the classroom rules as we go.
'Shifters' Review: Fast-Forwarding Through a Predictable Romance
NEW YORK -- When it comes to the romance genre, contemporary British playwriting seems to have discovered a new species. Nick Payne's 2012 "Constellations" is probably the most famous example of this type, or perhaps it's "The Effect," by Lucy Prebble. Here's what the species looks like: In a dark void lit by punchy bursts of light, a couple lives out a poignant relationship in pointillist time-lapse, skipping swiftly from one interaction to the next.
At Hudson Valley Shakespeare, a 'King Lear' Worth Traveling For
(Critic's Notebook) Talk to anyone who has ever been to Hudson Valley Shakespeare, and you'll probably hear first about the weather. That's not a knock on the company's acting nor on the productions. But for decades the troupe performed in a tent high on a hilltop near Garrison, New York, and, starting this year, the performers act in an open-air venue overlooking the Hudson River.
'The Potluck' Review: The Greensboro Massacre, and a Heavy Legacy to Bear
NEW YORK -- The first words of "The Potluck," the reflexive, repetitive new musical by César Alvarez, are a complaint. A frustrated composer sits at a table, staring dolefully into a laptop. "I'm supposed to write this musical," they sigh. This is the writer's own avatar, César -- played by Anthony Alfaro, lead singer of the glam-rock band Tony & the Kiki -- doing their best to dramatize a weary case of writer's block, claiming that everything's against them, starting with capitalism.
'Birthright' Stages a Thrillingly Complex Conversation on Conversation Itself
(Critic's Pick) NEW YORK -- In Jonathan Spector's "Birthright" -- a thrillingly constructed drama about six Jewish American friends -- the whole world is built out of conversation. More than three hours of overlapping speech race along without our feeling the passage of time, even as nearly two decades of the characters' lives go whizzing by. Reminiscence piles on confession, argument on exegesis.
Review: 'Romeo & Juliet' Find Too Little Love in the Park
NEW YORK -- Over the years, there have probably been 10,000 balcony scenes in 10,000 productions of "Romeo and Juliet." And in that time, Juliet's spot high above the Capulet garden has been played onstage by a window, a ladder, an Italianate porch, even a chair. There have been as many kinds of balconies as there have been lovesick Romeos to yearn under them. But I think I'm safe in saying that the balcony has never yet been played by the Mexico-U.S. border wall.
Review: 'Romeo & Juliet' Find Too Little Love in the Park
NEW YORK -- Over the years, there have probably been 10,000 balcony scenes in 10,000 productions of "Romeo and Juliet." And in that time, Juliet's spot high above the Capulet garden has been played onstage by a window, a ladder, an Italianate porch, even a chair. There have been as many kinds of balconies as there have been lovesick Romeos to yearn under them. But I think I'm safe in saying that the balcony has never yet been played by the Mexico-U.S. border wall.
'Girl, Interrupted' Review: A Musical That's a Little Too Tranquilized
NEW YORK -- I always experience a bit of chronological confusion about "Girl, Interrupted." Susanna Kaysen published her memoir in 1993, and it was made into a movie in 1999 -- a super-melodramatic version starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie -- so it often feels to me like an emblem of the '90s.
'Jerome' Review: Darkness Swallows a Three-Way Romance
NEW YORK -- John J. Caswell's new drama "Jerome," opening this week at Playwrights Horizons, appears to take place in a hole in the ground. Two 60-something men, Con (Stephen Spinella) and Doane (Jeorge Bennett Watson), do live there -- at one point, Con says they bought their house for its one basalt wall, a slab of living rock anchoring the whole structure.
Review: 'The Maids' Makes a Ruckus but Not Enough Mess
NEW YORK -- There was a time in this town when you couldn't shake a feather duster without hitting a production of Jean Genet's "The Maids." The 1947 French proto-camp classic fizzes with class rage and dominance games, and it has been catnip for adventurous directors: simultaneously cheap to produce -- requiring just a bedroom set and three actors -- and emotionally feverish.
'The Emporium' Review: Thornton Wilder Doesn't Make the Sale
NEW YORK -- The first thing you should know about "The Emporium," especially if you've heard it's a newly discovered play by Thornton Wilder, is that it isn't exactly by Thornton Wilder. Before Wilder died in 1975, he did write a lot of it, or, rather, he wrote too much of it. According to the show itself, which opened Monday at the Classic Stage Company, Wilder's collected papers contain at least 360 handwritten pages of notes and partial drafts.
Review: In 'Dad Don't Read This' a Playwright (Maybe?) Grows Up
(Critic's Pick) NEW YORK -- After the opening night performance of Eliya Smith's unnerving "Dad Don't Read This" in the scrappy basement venue below St. Luke's Church, the lead producer thanked several people. She referred adoringly to the press representative as the show's "dad" and also thanked her parents, who donated the Christmas lights hanging above us.
Revenge, Served Two Ways: Cold in 'Othello' and Lukewarm in 'Hamlet'
(Critic's Notebook) NEW YORK -- When I tell you I went to two different, three-hour-long Shakespeare productions, it won't surprise you that I spent all six hours thinking about revenge. Shakespeare loved a vengeance plot: His characters are always biting their thumbs at each other and kicking off citywide murder sprees or finding some knife-thin excuse to shiv a superior.
'Moby Dick' Review: Robert Wilson's Last Masterpiece
(Critic's Pick) NEW YORK -- Just a few months before the great American avant-garde director Robert Wilson died -- the last day of July 2025 -- Wilson's production of "Mary Said What She Said" came to NYU Skirball. Isabelle Huppert declaimed in French as the doomed Mary Stuart, a high Elizabethan collar framing a face painted chalk-white. She moved unnaturally yet smoothly, like a marionette suspended a centimeter above the floor, gliding through one of Wilson's cold, gray limbos.
'The Lost Boys' Review: Live, Die, Reprise
NEW YORK -- If you think about it, "Peter Pan" is a creepy story. Why is that flying boy tapping on Wendy's window at night? What's the kid's problem with daylight, and why can't he die? Give it a little time, and the light bulb -- vampire! -- should come on. kAm%96 D4C:AE 7@C Q%96 {@DE q@JD[Q y@6= $49F>2496CVD `hgf >@G:6 E92E A6CDF2565 2E =62DE @?6 v6?6C2E:@? )6C :? J@FC =:76 E@ 86E 2 3=624965 >F==6E[ 3682?
'Joe Turner's Come and Gone' Review: August Wilson's Spiritual Masterpiece
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Review: 'The Rocky Horror Show' Rewards Your Sense of Antici...pation
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Review: In 'The Balusters,' Neighborly Dysfunction Is on the Agenda
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'Proof' Review: Ayo Edebiri as a Math Girl, Interrupted
NEW YORK -- There was a time, right around the turn of the millennium, when math and madness were simultaneously in vogue. kAm!9JD:4:DE qC:2? vC66?VD 3@@< 23@FE DEC:?8 E96@CJ[ Q%96 t=682?E &?:G6CD6[Q H2D 2? F?=:<6=J 9@E D6==6C[ 2?5 :? a__`[ Qp q62FE:7F= |:?5[Q DE2CC65 E96 D@7E\6J65 #FDD6== rC@H6 2D }@36= !C:K6\H:??:?8 >2E96>2E:4:2? y@9? u@C36D }2D9 yC] %96 >@G:6[ 2 D6?E:>6?E2= A@CEC2:E @7 }2D9VD DECF88=6 H:E9 \\ 2?5[ 2=>@DE F?36=:6G23=J[ k6>m4@?BF6DE @7k^6>m \\ D49:K@A9C6?:2[ H@F=5 8@ @? E@ H:?
Review: 'The Fear of 13' Doesn't Entirely Add Up
NEW YORK -- Even if you have no idea of the backstory behind Lindsey Ferrentino's oddly uneven prison drama "The Fear of 13," a London transfer to Broadway that opened Wednesday at the James Earl Jones Theater, you might choose to see it for its stars: Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson, both making their Broadway debuts, which they handle with easy confidence. kAmpE 7:CDE 8=2?46[ u6CC6?E:?@VD A=2J D66>D =:<6 2 492?46 E@ D66 E96 A2:C :? 2 D925@HJ[ EC@F3=:?8 C@>2?46[ @?6 F?7@=5:?8 36EH66? 2 >2?
Review: 'The Fear of 13' Doesn't Entirely Add Up
NEW YORK -- Even if you have no idea of the backstory behind Lindsey Ferrentino's oddly uneven prison drama "The Fear of 13," a London transfer to Broadway that opened Wednesday at the James Earl Jones Theater, you might choose to see it for its stars: Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson, both making their Broadway debuts, which they handle with easy confidence. kAmpE 7:CDE 8=2?46[ u6CC6?E:?@VD A=2J D66>D =:<6 2 492?46 E@ D66 E96 A2:C :? 2 D925@HJ[ EC@F3=:?8 C@>2?46[ @?6 F?7@=5:?8 36EH66? 2 >2?
Review: A Cold, Perfect 'Death of a Salesman' for Our Time
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'Cats: The Jellicle Ball' Review: Fanciful and Fabulous
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'Giant' Review: As Roald Dahl, John Lithgow Is a Study in Monstrosity
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'Tru' and 'The Fever': The Contagion of the Rich
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Review: 'The Wild Party' Has a Ball at City Center
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Review: 'The Wild Party' Has a Ball at City Center
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Daniel Radcliffe Makes 'Every Brilliant Thing' Shine
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'Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)' Review: Tragically Uneven
NEW YORK -- There's a bizarre absence of true conflict -- or agon if you're being fancy -- in Anna Ziegler's "Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)," a self-sabotaging drama that opened Wednesday at the Public Theater. Ziegler's feminist riff on Sophocles' ancient Greek tragedy feints at grappling with up-to-date issues, but the new play, directed by Tyne Rafaeli, never finds any worthy combatants, either in the world of the characters or, importantly, in reality. kAm(92E E96 AC@5F4E:@?
Wallace Shawn's 'What We Did Before Our Moth Days' Is Purgatory Done Right
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Review: 'You Got Older,' With Alia Shawkat, Gets a Sharp Revival
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Review: 'The Tragedy of Coriolanus' Swerves Off Course
NEW YORK -- On the bright side, you can't accuse "The Tragedy of Coriolanus" -- the text, that is -- of being irrelevant. Shakespeare's late drama about the fall of a prideful Roman general, who refuses to bend his neck to civilian politicking, is as bleak a mirror as any society could ever hold up. It may never have been performed in Shakespeare's lifetime, and, hey, if I were running a playhouse in a monarchy, I might have balked, too. No producer needs that heat.
'Hate Radio' and Other Transmissions From the Theater of the Real
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'The Unknown' Review: Sean Hayes Turns One Man Into a Mystery
NEW YORK -- Narrators are inherently tricky figures. There's something furtive and insinuating about them, especially when they speak in the first person. What if the narrator starts lying? Is the narrator-self consistently one self? Surrealist detective fiction excels at exploiting this Möbius-strip confusion -- an investigator might go looking for a murderer, say, only to find out that he's the one who dunit. kAm{2DE 46?EFCJ H2D 7F== @7 DF49 >6E2A9JD:42= D=6FE96CJ[ 7C@> v]z] r96DE6CE@? WQ%96 |2?
A Stunning 'King Lear' That Reveals, Finally, a King in Full
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'The Disappear' Review: A Couple on the Rocks and Out of Sync
NEW YORK -- Whatever chaos ensues in "The Disappear," Erica Schmidt's baffling midlife crisis comedy that opened Thursday at Audible's Minetta Lane Theater, the show's initial confusion seems intentional. The set (by Brett J. Banakis) is misdirection: It shows us the shadowy interior of a dark-wood-and-velvet country home; at the stage's periphery, the yard is a field of tall, pale grasses, which recall the Russian steppe.
'The Disappear' Review: A Couple on the Rocks and Out of Sync
NEW YORK -- Whatever chaos ensues in "The Disappear," Erica Schmidt's baffling midlife crisis comedy that opened Thursday at Audible's Minetta Lane Theater, the show's initial confusion seems intentional. The set (by Brett J. Banakis) is misdirection: It shows us the shadowy interior of a dark-wood-and-velvet country home; at the stage's periphery, the yard is a field of tall, pale grasses, which recall the Russian steppe.
Climate Action Needs Artists
Akram Khan is a Londoner born to Bangladeshi parents who brings both those cultures to his artform of dance. He is an internationally acclaimed choreographer known for his contemporary re-imaginating of a ballet classic Giselle. Khan’s Giselle is located in a world of corruption, greed and conflict with Giselle as a oppressed, migrant garment worker and his dance movements use the classical Indian kathak dance tradition and blends east and west.
The Power of Storytelling in Climate Change
" Examine climate change as an idea of the imagination rather than a problem to be solved " Mike Hulme Why We Disagree About Climate Change " Make no mistake: the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture and thus of the imagination " Amitav Ghosh The Great Derangement If, as geographer Mike Hulme argues, we should see climate change as an "idea of the imagination rather than a problem to be solved" then screenwriter Robert McKee tells us "storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas...
Three London Productions Stretch the Boundaries of Reality
I had been particularly eager to see “Orlando,” which slots into the current gender discourse with a nearly audible click. In Neil Bartlett’s new adaptation, as in Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, a poetic young aristocrat named Orlando catches the eye of Queen Elizabeth, embarks on various amorous adventures, falls into a coma, and wakes up changed into a woman.
Three London Productions Stretch the Boundaries of Reality
How we fell under the spell of witcherature From a feminist retelling of Pride and Prejudice, featuring Lydia Bennet as a witch, to a history of landmark trials and a host of magical wellness titles, 2023 is the year in which witch books will truly cast their spell. No longer a niche market, the titles coming out range from historical fiction to fantasy to self-help.
Everything Avant-Garde Is Old Again
At least, we were this week. The experimental scene in New York found itself looking backward for its inspiration, finding solace in old movements, including gestures from childhood.
Some relief for those floored by floods
While many who live on Australia’s drenched east coast may be asking ‘When will the rain stop?’, a glance at the Bureau of Meteorology shows there’s much more to come. Storms are forecast to continue to hit already flooded areas of south-east Queensland and New South Wales, while the clean-up in decimated areas such as Lismore begins as communities mourn those lost to the floods.
Vol. 2, Episode 14: Never go to anybodys house
Link to the show: Young Adult Movie Ministry Vol. 2, Episode 14 on Substack Release date: February 11, 2022 Movie of the Week The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), directed by Joel Coen [On AppleTV+ ] Special Guest Helen Shaw is the theatre critic for New York magazine. Who the Hosts Are This Week Sam is reporter-at-large, editor of Forever Wars, film critic for hire, and Thane. Alissa is the film critic at Vox, author of the upcoming book Salty, and a bubbling cauldron.
January’s Theater Festivals Are Mostly Postponed — But Here’s What You Can See
Producing a festival is like conducting a war with multiple fronts — travel visas, multiple venues, overstretched staff. Late in December, New York’s experimental theater festivals were losing every battle, on every front, to Omicron. People kept testing positive; sets couldn’t be unloaded from cartage; performers couldn’t make it into the country.
Analaysis: The Deaths in Custody campaigner’s view. No-one has been held responsible
Inquest is unique in working directly with the families of those who die in all forms of state custody: police, prison, immigration and psychiatric detention, and has worked on most of the significant and controversial restraint-related deaths in those settings over the past two decades.
Caroline, or Change
Don’t miss your chance to experience this triumphant new production of a “candidate for the century’s greatest piece of musical theater” (Helen Shaw, New York Magazine/Vulture). Roundabout Theatre Company has brought the musical masterpiece, CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, back to Broadway for a very limited engagement, with a cast led by London’s three-time Olivier Award winner Sharon D Clarke, who delivers “a performance that people will talk about forever” (Theatermania).
Fucking A & In the Blood
Fucking A & In the Blood Helen Shaw Poetic parables: the Signature Theatre mounts Suzan-Lori Parks’s takes on The Scarlet Letter. Christine Lahti in Fucking A. Photo: Joan Marcus.
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