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, May 2008 Throughout my childhood, my family made the two hour drive between our homes in New York City and northwestern Connecticut every weekend. My parents never forgot the time when I was about three, that I started to tell them a story as we…
Reviewed by Gail M. Burns, December 2007 “Is this what Christmas has degenerated into, Doctor? It’s pure commercialism. Is there no true Christmas spirit left in the world?” Maybe I am turning into a real Grinch in my old age, but the NYSTI production of Miracle on 34th Street left me absolutely…
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,…
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, October 2005 I spent a great deal of time the past week grumbling about murder mystery plays. I am not much of a mystery fan, and I will never understand the American value system that categorizes murder as “wholesome entertainment”, but I find mysteries in…
