Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, March 2009 The nicest part [of being in hiding] is being able to write down all my thoughts and feelings, otherwise I’d absolutely suffocate.– Anne Frank, March 16, 1944 There is no other word but beautiful for NYSTI’s production of Yours, Anne, under the direction of Michael…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, October 2008 It is late afternoon on a swelteringly hot summer day in 1957. Twelve jurors – four women and eight men – file in to the Jury Room of a New York City court house to decide the fate of a young man accused…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, February 2008 Come, thick night,And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hellThat my keen knife see not the wound it makesNor heaven peep through the blanket of the darkTo cry, ‘Hold, hold!’– Lady Macbeth, Act I, scene v That blanket of dark enveloped Elizabeth…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, May 2007 If you take Reunion at face value as staged musical chronicle of the years Abraham Lincoln was president, it works very well. The production currently on the boards at NYSTI looks and sounds great. I found it moving and entertaining, and so did my eleven-year-old…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, February 2007 “Nothing is ever settled until it is settled right.” – Rudyard Kipling The New York State Theatre Institute kicks off 2007 by giving Agatha Christie fans exactly what they have been longing for – the world premiere of a literate new stage adaptation…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, May 2006 Joan of Arc (1412-1431) made her first appearance as a character in a play within five years of her victory at Orléans in a pageant of thanksgiving staged by that city. Even then, with the Inquisition that put Joan to death still very…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, January 2006 For all her faults, our nation is an amazing place, and the story of her founding is a gripping one. 1776 the Tony award-winning 1969 musical by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone does as good a job as is possible in telescoping the events in…
