In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the off-Broadway transfer of Eclipsed, a new Broadway revival of The Gin Game, and the New York premiere of Unseamly. Here’s an excerpt.

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“Eclipsed,” Danai Gurira’s 2009 play about how a group of African women struggled to survive the Second Liberian Civil War, just moved from the Yale Repertory Theater to the Public Theater. It has reached New York largely—perhaps entirely—because of the fortuitous addition to the cast of Lupita Nyong’o, lately and famously of “12 Years a Slave.” Whatever the reason, you must not miss it.

To be sure, “Eclipsed” is oddly undramatic. Indeed, it feels less like a play than a fictionalized documentary—but one of genius, a deceptively bald piece of storytelling in which the everyday details of life during wartime are charged with overwhelming emotional import. At its heart are three “wives” (Saycon Sengbloh, Pascale Armand and Ms. Nyong’o) of a never-seen warlord who live in a bullet-pocked hut near the front lines, huddled together in the hope of escaping the insensate violence of a world made by hate-driven madmen…

Broadway has itself a surefire hit: “The Gin Game,” D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer-winning two-character “tragi-comedy” (his word) about nursing-home life, is now being revived on Broadway for the second time, with James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson playing the roles created in 1977 by Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy….

Unfortunately, Leonard Foglia, the director, seems not to understand that there’s more to “The Gin Game” than jokes. Mr. Cronyn, who had the signal advantage of being directed by Mike Nichols, crackled with the touch-me-not rage of a once-independent man who now lives on welfare and plays cards all day in a crumbling old-age home. When he said “I guess we just lived too long” to Ms. Tandy, you knew he wasn’t kidding. When Mr. Jones says it, you want to hug him and go “Aaaww.”…

Oren Safdie, whose “Private Jokes, Public Places,” a coruscatingly witty play of ideas about starchitecture, was one of the highlights of 2003, is back in town. This time his target, though just as contemporary, is of potentially wider interest: “Unseamly” is a three-hander about a sexual-harassment case in which the harasser bears a distinct resemblance to Dov Charney, the ex-CEO of American Apparel, who got canned by his board last year for much the same kind of behavior and who, er, just happens to be Mr. Safdie’s cousin….

“Unseamly” is smart, fast, filthy and funny….

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To read my review of Eclipsed, go here.

To read my review of The Gin Game, go here.

To read my review of Unseamly, go here.

The trailer for the Yale Repertory Theatre production of Eclipsed:

A live stage performance of the original production of The Gin Game, starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy and directed by Mike Nichols. It was taped in London in 1980 and telecast on PBS the following year:

Benedict Cumberbatch and Kobna Holdbrook-Smit perform an excerpt from Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. This performance, which took place at London’s Olivier Theatre, was part of a 2013 celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the National Theatre, which gave the play its London premiere in 1967:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)

“We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the kind of society we have arranged thus far. We will be lucky if we can postpone the search for new technologies for a while, until we have discovered some satisfactory things to do with the extra time.”

Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

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:
• An American in Paris (musical, G, too complex for small children, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fool for Love (drama, R, extended through Dec. 13, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, closes Jan. 17, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hand to God (black comedy, X, absolutely not for children or prudish adults, closes Jan. 3, reviewed here)
• The King and I (musical, G, perfect for children with well-developed attention spans, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, reviewed here)
• Spring Awakening (musical, PG-13/R, closes Jan. 24, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, ideal for bright children, remounting of Broadway production, original production reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• The Flick (serious comedy, PG-13, too long for young people with limited attention spans, reviewed here)

IN ASHLAND, OREGON:
• Guys and Dolls (musical, G, closes Nov. 1, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:
• The Price (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 22, reviewed here)
• The Tempest (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Nov. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare, PG-13, remounting of Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production, closes Oct. 31, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:
• Sweet Charity (musical, PG-13, closes Oct. 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN ASHLAND, OREGON:
• Sweat (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:
• The Time of Your Life (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 25, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN LOS ANGELES:
• Love Letters (drama, PG-13, remounting of Broadway production, closes Oct. 25, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:
• You Never Can Tell (Shaw, PG-13, closes Oct. 25, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN PITTSBURGH:
• The Diary of Anne Frank (drama, G/PG-13, closes Oct. 25, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN SPRING GREEN, WIS.:
• An Iliad (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“Resentment isn’t a magnetic personal style.”

Peggy Noonan, “Confessions of a White House Speechwriter”

I’ve been putting it off for the past couple of years, but the time has finally come for me to buy a new laptop—a MacBook Air, to be exact. In order to make the Big Switch, I’ll have to drop off my obsolescent laptop at Tekserve for two days. As a result, I won’t be able to send or receive e-mail from Thursday at noon to Saturday at noon.

I’m not sentimental about inanimate objects, but neither am I looking forward to retiring my trusty MacBook, which I’ve used every day for the past eleven years. During that time I launched this blog and wrote All in the Dances, The Letter, Pops, Satchmo at the Waldorf, Duke, and a thousand-odd essays, articles, and reviews. That’s a long and eventful run.

While I have a lurking fear that changing computers at the age of fifty-nine will feel like getting a double hand transplant, the kindly folks at Tekserve promise me that it won’t be nearly as stressful as all that. Check this space on Monday and I’ll let you know who was right. In the meantime, I’ve preposted Friday’s blog entries, so business will continue as usual in my temporary absence.

Wish me luck.

UPDATE: It turns out that I’ll be off line until Monday, October 18. See you then.

An excerpt from BBC2’s 1982 TV production of Noël Coward’s A Song at Twilight, directed by Cedric Messina and featuring Deborah Kerr and Paul Scofield. The role played by Scofield is a fictionalized portrayal of Somerset Maugham. To read more about the play, go here:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)

“Noah, you’re so full of what’s right you can’t see what’s good!”

N. Richard Nash, The Rainmaker