Burning up the Tango Floor

Karina Smirnoff and Maksim Chmerkovskiy in Forever Tango.

Forever Tango...whether you see that as a promise or a threat all depends on your affinity for the hot Latin dance and those who perform it. Mine wasn't strong enough to be sustained by this rather conventional return to Broadway for the popular show, but it's worth noting that two of the hot-footed dancers burning up the boards of Walter Kerr Theatre are Maksim and Karina from Dancing with the Stars, who last Broadway hoofing was a couple of summers ago in Burn the Floor. And it was cool to do my first Broadway review for Time Out New York.

Cutting the Cord—Or Not

Dale Carman and Wilson Bridges in The Silver Cord.

That film and television now fulfill a role that theater once played is not such a bad thing. Case in point: There's no longer a need for playwrights like Sidney Howard to be quite so overt in dispensing advice to helicopter mothers and their suffocated offspring, as he is in The Silver Cord, now being revived by the Peccadillo Theater Company.

The Great Fall

Jill Tanner and George Morfogen in A Picture of Autumn.

Lots of theaters (though certainly not enough of them) introduce their audiences to new playwrights, but not many can say they introduce their audiences to "new" playwrights who died 40 years ago. Such are the joys of the Mint Theater Company, which is presenting N.C. Hunter's A Picture of Autumn this summer. Imagine what could have happened to the Crawleys on Downton Abbey if Matthew hadn't intervened and stabilized their finances and you'll understand the sadness and struggles that confront the family in this solidly acted and moving 1951 British drama.

Dysfunctional Family

Deirdre O'Connell, DeMunn and Charlie Saxton in A Family for All Occasions.

Am I the only one who didn't see why Bob Glaudini's Jack Goes Boating received the all the praise that it did when it played Off Broadway several years ago? It seemed like Steppenwolf-lite: filled with characters that were alternately dark and/or quirky but bore little resemblance actual people.

That was a Labyrinth Theater Company production that starred Philip Seymour Hoffman. Now Hoffman directs Glaudini's latest play for Labyrinth, A Family for All Occasions. It has flashes of brilliance, especially when Jeffrey DeMunn is onstage (how nice not to see him battling zombies on The Walking Dead anymore), but also long stretches of aimless plotting.

It's a Draw

William Laney and Alex Fast in The Drawer Boy.

I almost never tire of dry, quirky, understated Canadian humor, and when that is the main thrust of The Drawer Boy, Michael Healey's play is a delight. But this tale of two farmers with a mysterious past overreaches in the second act, aiming for profundity and coming up quaint. Perhaps that's why it took 14 year for it to receive it's New York premiere, in a production now at SoHo Playhouse.

Not Much Will Power

Jeremiah Kissel, Christianna Nelson and Pendleton in The Last Will.

Think formalizing your final will is one of life's more soporific labors. I'm afraid it's not much more interesting watching Shakespeare accomplish the task in The Last Will, Robert Brustein's look at the late-in-life Bard, retired from the theater and back home in Stratford. The respected Austin Pendleton both stars in and directs this production, a herculean assignment under the best of circumstances.

Who's in Once

Darvill and Christie in Once.

When I heard this morning that Arthur Darvill was stepping into one of the lead roles in the Broadway production of Once, I was sure I missed a press release or three. Surely producers knew he was one of the stars of Doctor Who, and that his presence might generate a bump in ticket sales. But it's like he appeared on Broadway out of nowhere (via TARDIS perhaps?).

The New York Times and the Associated Press cited immigration issues as the reason no advance notice was given prior to Darvill and his new British costar, Joanna Christie, joining the cast. Both articles claim that they're starting Tuesday, but the Stage Door Dish has physical evidence that they've already started, last Friday according to the blog.

Whether planned or not, sneaking up on Broadway like this is kind of a shrewd move for someone with the sort of fan-following Darvill has. Had there been a big announcement leading up to his first performance, there would have been a lot of anticipation for that first performance, not to mention requests for media interviews (I probably would have been one of them). But now he's "starting" with four performances already under his belt, so by the time Whovians start buying tickets and seeing the show and tweeting and blogging about it, he'll have already settled into the role. You get pretty smart when you hang around the Doctor...

This probably has nothing to do with what really happened, but it makes for a nice theory, don't you think?