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, March 2007 I tried to explain American Soup to someone the other day and ended up saying, “Well, at the back of the stage Andy Warhol is in purgatory, on the front we watch 50 years in the lives of this Italian-American family who run a restaurant…
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, December 2006 On the way over the mountains to Troy my eleven-year-old nephew regaled me with tales of why his life was terrible. He had a good litany going and to listen to him his life was indeed nigh on to unbearable. It was amazing…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, October 2006 If you love theatre, you MUST go and see Better Don’t Talk, and you better had hurry because it is only playing through October 29 at NYSTI! I make this bold statement not only because Naava Piatka gives a tour de force performance in this one-woman…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, June 2006 It is a sad comment on how we prioritize our arts dollars that I am used to seeing even the very best children’s theatre presented with fairly low-budget production values. So NYSTI’s top-flight production of The Cat, the Sun, and the Mirror, a new…
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, March 2006 During World War II the Danish Resistance managed to smuggle about 7,000 of the 8,000 Danish Jews over the sea to safety in Sweden, which remainded free of Nazi domination. Lois Lowry’s Newberyy award-winning young adult novel, Number the Stars tells the fictional story of…
