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Eric Coble’s new play features a role that “has bravura written all over it,” said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. Alexandra, a 79-year-old Brooklynite, so resents her children’s attempt to move her into a nursing home that she has barricaded herself in her brownstone behind a wall of Molotov cocktails and is threatening to blow the whole block sky-high. The part’s “written for an actress with heat in her eyes and a fire in her belly,” and Oscar winner Estelle Parsons radiates those qualities. She almost makes up for the shortcomings of Coble’s play, which goes for absurdity over realism and winds up feeling silly and histrionic.
Forget the flaws in the premise, said Charles Isherwood in The New York Times. “Thanks to Parsons’s wry, thoroughly unsentimental performance, and Coble’s mostly sensitive writing, the slightly contrived setup fades into irrelevance.” A beloved but estranged son, played by Stephen Spinella, climbs in through a window early on, launching a long conversation about family history, Alexandra’s recent memory lapses, and whether leveling the neighborhood is really such a good idea. We don’t long worry about that possibility: In a play that “recalls the amiably crowd-pleasing comedies of Neil Simon,” the ending obviously won’t involve pyrotechnics. But don’t expect soppy sentiment, either. “Parsons invests Alexandra with such natural intelligence and strength of purpose” that the depth of her plight will cause your heart to ache.
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If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
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Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
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Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
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The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
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Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
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The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
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No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
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The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.