The Public Theater

Liza Minnelli
The Palace Theatre
Through December 28

I don’t know how many comebacks a been-around human body over 50 is physiologically capable of pulling off before it drops dead, but in her electrifying new show at the Palace, Liza Minnelli, 62, like her mother before her, has done it again. Sparkling and splendid and larky and nervous and overwhelming all at the same time, she is also stylishly slim in Halston perfection. Brilliantly directed and choreographed by Ron Lewis, she looks great. She is fabulously energetic and spirited. The weight she’s lost is the equivalent of a year’s supply of Big Macs! And the standing ovations that never cease are more than deserved.  read more »

I went to see four Christmas and Chanukah shows recently, and I trust I won’t be revealing any bias—kayn aynhoreh—in anything I say about them.

Take Slava’s Snowshow, now at the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway. The masterly Russian clown’s production brought out the Grinch in me in this crucial respect: For the remainder of its limited run, the tickets are an extortionate $111.50 with the cheapest seats going for $69.50.

There are no reduced prices for children.

Furthermore, Snowshow is only just over an hour long: 90 minutes, including the interval.

Give us a break!

It’s a children’s show.  read more »

Horton Foote’s Dividing the Estate, which has made a very welcome transfer to the Booth Theatre on Broadway, couldn’t be timelier.

Mr. Foote’s gentle, comic parable about self-interest and desperation over the fate of a family estate in the playwright’s imagined small town of Harrison, Texas, first premiered at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre in 1989. With the rising anxiety about our economic future, the celebrated play and its genteelly feuding Southern characters have become more poignant. But only the prescient Mr. Foote, who ranks among America’s greatest playwrights, would make his point so charmingly in the unobtrusive manner of Chekhov.

 read more »

The Public Theater’s smashing new revival of Hair (1967) in Central Park is a joy from beginning to end. It’s just the best, though fans of South Pacific (1947) might not agree with me.

I felt about Lincoln Center’s loving revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific that while the audience seemed to be in heaven, I was in a retirement home. But Hair is different. Hair is my South Pacific.

“The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical”—to give its glorious subtitle—was the first show I ever saw with performers onstage who were my own age. It’s the musical that spoke directly to my 1960s generation, though there’s another particular affection I have for it: For reasons nobody’s ever been able to figure out, Hair’s stoned hero—Claude Bukowski from Flushing, Queens—likes to pretend he’s from Manchester, England.  read more »