NewYorkNotebook

**** The Winter’s Tale (Delacorte Theater, to August 23) is, like every entry in Joe Papp’s enduring legacy, a must-see – and free, to boot. Raúl Esparza is perfection as an insecure monarch given to flipflopping paranoia, perhaps warranted by Lily Rabe’s rather bawdish initial affect as his very pregnant consort.

Nick Westrate and James Udom in Othello. Photo: Richard Termine Marriage is a bloodbath, in director’s Carl Cofield’s tight, pumped rendition of Othello, offered free in Marcus Garvey Park by the Classical Theatre of Harlem. “This guy thinks his wife is cheating on him,” I heard a woman report to a friend on the phone immediately after a recent performance, “so he kills her! Then he kills himself.

It’s a freebie too tempting to pass up: Every year, the Taglit Birthright Israel foundation treats young American Jews (ages 18-26) to a free promotional trip to Tel Aviv and environs, with the stated goal of community-building. Over 900,000 young people have participated to date. Jonathan Spector’s latest play tracks six such beneficiaries who visit in 2006 and come away impressed to varying degrees – and all sufficiently stoked to plan a speedy reunion.

The cast of A Walk on the Moon. Photo: Joan Marcus Any attempt to single out the merits of this mishegoss musicalization of the standout 1999 movie (Pamela Gray gets writer credit on both), presents a challenge. There aren’t many. To synopsize the plot, per the stage version: It’s August 1969.

Alana Raquel Bowers, Donna Lynne Champlin, Maryann Plunkett, and Clare O’Malley Photo: Carol Rosegg How do you recover from the revelation that the most important person in your life may have behaved in ways you consider unconscionable or at minimum unacceptable? That’s the dilemma facing Nell (Maryann Plunkett), an emotionally guarded Airbnb host at a County Clare farmhouse who learns about a side to her college professor son – Robin, her only child – that she would never have imagined.

Andrew Garman, Talene Monahon, Bruce McKenzie, Ethan Dubin, Brendan George, Jennifer Van Dyck, and Sarah Steele in The Family Dog. Photo: Maria Baranova Given that New York theatre cognoscenti revere Clubbed Thumb as one of the city’s top hatcheries for inventive new works, the short-run “Summerworks” selections presented at the tiny Wild Project theater (89 seats, not counting aisle cushions) are among the hottest tickets in town.

Alden Ehrenreich and Madeline Brewer. Photo: Marc J. Franklin She’s a sly one, this would-be social climber just a couple of consonants removed from Thackeray’s 1847 super-striver, Becky Sharp.

Alex Brightman and corps. Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman When’s the last time you went to the theater and grinned like a fool for two hours straight? Cinco Paul’s adaptation (book, music, lyrics) of the Apple TV+ series is a tonic – offering escapism as salutary as the adventure that a work-worn couple stumbles upon when, lost in the woods while glumly hiking, they happen to cross a fateful bridge..

Aya Cash, John Lithgow, Stella Everett, and Rachel Stirling in Giant. Photo: Joan Marcus For several decades now, ever since superstar children’s author Roald Dahl outed himself as anti-Israeli, any savoring of his work has been something of a guilty pleasure – for adults, anyway. Children continue to lap up his playful crypto-sadism (pushed to an extreme in the Netflix adaptation of Matilda the Musical), and grownups, happy to support reading in any form, have tended to stay mum.

Will Pullen and Katie Finneran in The Receptionist. Photo: Joan Marcus How could playwright Adam Bock have anticipated the sturdiness of his dystopian 2007 playlet The Receptionist? When it debuted at City Center in 2007, the horrors of Abu Ghraib were unfurling in the headlines as the trials unfolded. Did any of us ingenuously imagine then that the U.S. government’s egregious abuse of power in Iraq under George W. Bush, exposed for all to see, was a one-off?