REVIEW: “The Philadelphia Story” at the New York State Theatre Institute

Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, April 2009 “Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don’t do that by sitting around wondering about yourself.”– Katharine Hepburn “If you’re given a choice…

REVIEW: “Anastasia” at the New York State Theatre Institute

Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, April 2008 Believe it or not, when I was a very little girl, I wanted to be a princess. Upon learning that Americans couldn’t be princesses (Shhhh! Don’t tell Walt Disney or Grace Kelly!) I switched to wanting to be a paleontologist and then a…

REVIEW: The Theatre Company at Hubbard Hall Presents “Heartbreak House”

Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, March 2008 [The British public] just stared [at Anton Chekhov’s plays] and said, ‘How Russian!’ They did not strike me in that way. Just as Ibsen’s intensely Norwegian plays exactly fitted every middle and professional class suburb in Europe, these intensely Russian plays fitted all…

REVIEW: “Arsenic and Old Lace” at the New York State Theatre Institute

Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, October 2007 Alas, poor Mortimer Brewster (Jason Marr). A recalcitrant theatre critic for a major New York newspaper, on the very night he has to go and review “Murder Will Out” he “outs” several murderers in his own extended family. Of course, as Mortimer says,…