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Helen Shaw

Theater Critic

Helen Shaw has written about theater in New York since 2005, and for New York since 2019.

  1. theater review
    Dirtbag Dramaturgy in Dimes SquareSo are folks really doing this much coke? (Allegedly!)
  2. theater review
    Paul Lazar’s Cage Shuffle Marathon Is a Chance Chance RevelationThe anecdotalist avant-gardist.
  3. theater review
    A Frustrating Merchant of Venice With a Shylock to RememberThe quality of John Douglas Thompson is not strained.
  4. theater review
    The Music Man Finally Marches In, Looking BackwardIt’s $699 per premium seat, which comes out to $9.19 per trombone.
  5. theater review
    Tambo & Bones Shows the Skull Beneath the SkinDave Harris’s comedy makes it progressively harder to laugh.
  6. theater review
    MJ Exists in a Hyperbaric Chamber of DenialThe King of Pop’s posthumous handlers, like the man himself, keep their distance from reality.
  7. theater review
    Intimate Apparel and Shhhh Peek Into the UnmentionablesLynn Nottage’s 2003 play becomes an opera; Clare Barron’s new one operates in murmurs and ASMR.
  8. theater review
    Skeleton Crew, Transferred Uptown, Loses Some MusclePhylicia Rashad and company try to make a small show fill up a big stage.
  9. theater review
    A Speed Date With Long Day’s Journey Into NightCut from three and a half hours to two, and TB traded for COVID.
  10. theater review
    Taylor Mac’s The Hang Is Incomprehensible in the Best WayBaroque and soulful and sonically delicious.
  11. theater review
    Whisper House Is an Atmospheric Musical Without an AtmosphereChill-less and thrill-less, despite a killer creative team.
  12. theater review
    The Little Shows Must Go On: This Beautiful Future and EctoplasmSmall, imperfect, lovely — tales of love in last century’s wreckage.
  13. theater review
    The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe No Longer Finds ItTomlin and Wagner’s innovations have been replicated to exhaustion, and the material defeats Cecily Strong.
  14. theater preview
    January’s Theater Festivals Are Mostly Postponed — But Here’s What You Can SeeSome productions are streaming, others are open-air, and a couple are hoping to get onstage later in the month.
  15. extremely deep dive
    How West Side Story Reset ItselfVulture’s theater desk considers Tony Kushner’s song reordering as a deep reenvisioning that changes the musical’s core qualities.
  16. advent calendar
    Baby, It’s Cold Outside: Warm Up With James McAvoy’s Cyrano de BergeracFor fans of poetry, X-Men, or swooning.
  17. best of 2021
    The Best Theater of 2021Against all odds, there was astonishing work everywhere you looked this year.
  18. theater review
    When Lincoln Center Comes Down From This Trip, They’re Going to Feel WeirdFlying Over Sunset is a bad one.
  19. theater review
    In Comes Company, and Whaddaya Get?An awkward reinvention with some of the brilliance intact.
  20. theater review
    Kimberly Akimbo Never Gets OldA musical adaptation that wins you over for life.
  21. theater review
    Selling Kabul is a Claustrophobic, Effective Thriller“America, their word is good, okay?”
  22. theater review
    Mrs. Doubtfire Skirts the ProblemA musical full of cross-dressing tries to meet the moment without sacrificing blockbuster appeal.
  23. theater review
    The Wildly Different Altered States of The Mood Room and CandlelightIf The Mood Room is some extremely mellow weed, then Candlelight is a tab of acid, given to you right before a job interview.
  24. theater review
    Clyde’s and In the Southern Breeze: Two Journeys Into LimboOne achieves what the other only describes — namely, the process of reawakening from paralysis.
  25. theater review
    Goofing Around With The AlchemistThe play brings one of the last ingredients for a true return to theater: pure nonsense.
  26. theater review
    Trouble In Mind Deserved Better All AlongIt takes the American theater to task.
  27. theater review
    Diana: The Musical Is Almost as Bad as Her MarriageA misbegotten match from the start.
  28. comedy review
    Michael Che Is Better Than ThisFor much of Shame the Devil, he’s offering apologies and taking them back, giving explanations then rolling his eyes.
  29. theater review
    Theater Review: Assassins Takes Aim at the Here and NowThe Sondheim-Weidman musical is about desperate, damaged people turning their aggression on America itself. Remind you of anything?
  30. theater review
    Lagos Soaps and Superstitious Hopes: Nollywood Dreams and “The Pool Plays”Light and funny and weird on these dark days.
  31. theater review
    The Sharp-Edged Sword of while you were partyingHow dark can dark humor get?
  32. theater review
    Ibsen’s Peer Gynt Becomes Eno’s Gnit, and Turns Gnomic, Gnostic and GnostalgicWill Eno keeps his distance from Ibsen, though.
  33. theater review
    The Risks and Rewards of Theater About Right NowThe Visitor rips itself apart, and Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord will sew you back together.
  34. theater review
    Three Generations’ Inner Lives Come Out in Morning SunAnd you really ought to see Edie Falco, Blair Brown, and Marin Ireland as they do.
  35. theater review
    Back at the Scene of the Crimes: Revisiting Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992Anna Deavere Smith’s Rodney King testimonies return, restaged for this moment.
  36. theater review
    The Time Is Now, Finally, for Caroline, or ChangeTony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s musical was ahead of its audience in 2003.
  37. theater review
    The Mother Just Wants What’s Best For YouHave some Brecht, with Wooster sauce.
  38. theater review
    Fairycakes Never Takes FlightA play employing every theatrical sprite is pinned down by its leaden meter.
  39. theater review
    Dana H. Is Harrowing and UnmissableA big Broadway house doesn’t diminish any of its power.
  40. theater review
    The Lehman Trilogy (Almost) Delivers on Its InvestmentPeerless stagecraft and a once-in-a-lifetime cast.
  41. theater review
    Multidimensional Blackness in Thoughts of a Colored ManIt’s “explicitly about making visible what’s usually kept private.”
  42. theater review
    Is This a Room Asks Questions America Can’t AnswerThe play about Reality Winner moves uptown.
  43. theater review
    Chicken & Biscuits Serves Up Sustenance at a Church FuneralWith a side of syrup.
  44. theater review
    The Many Voices of a One-Man Show: Lackawanna BluesRuben Santiago-Hudson’s evocation of his steel-town youth.
  45. theater review
    Pop Renaissance! Six: The Musical Fans Lose Their Heads Over Broadway OpeningDeferred, beleaguered, survived.
  46. theater reviews
    Figuring Out Failure in the First Person: The Nosebleed and HindsightIn these two plays, things aren’t going great.
  47. dance review
    Bill T. Jones’s Deep Blue Sea Includes Everything and the Kitchen SinkA piece of art that’s awash in its own ideas.
  48. tony awards 2021
    The Tonys That Had to Do EverythingAfter 2020, Broadway vowed to do better. Last night’s telecast revealed the divisions that remain.
  49. tony awards 2021
    The Highs and Lows of the 2021 But Actually 2019–2020 Tony AwardsAnd I am telling you I don’t know how to use Paramount+.
  50. theater review
    Bond and Costanzo, Emotions Laid Bare, in Only an Octave ApartIf you clap hard enough — and you’d better — you’ll hear their encore, a mash-up of “Walk Like an Egyptian” and Philip Glass’s Akhnaten.
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