Archives for December 13, 2012

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:

• Annie (musical, G, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Dead Accounts (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Feb. 24, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, closes Jan. 26, reviewed here)

• Glengarry Glen Ross (drama, R, closes Jan. 20, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Golden Boy (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 20, reviewed here)

• The Mystery of Edwin Drood (musical, PG-13, most performances sold out last week, extended through Mar. 10, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (drama, PG-13/R, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• The Piano Lesson (drama, PG-13, extended through Jan. 13, reviewed here)

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, extended through Jan. 20, reviewed here)

• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 13, reviewed here)

IN BOSTON:

• Our Town (drama, G, remounting of off-Broadway production, extended through Jan. 25, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• Bring It On (musical, G, closes Dec. 30, reviewed here)

• A Christmas Story (musical, G, closes Dec. 30, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• Giant (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)

“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.”
W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage