Archives for December 6, 2012

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:

• Annie (musical, G, reviewed here)

• Bring It On (musical, G, closes Dec. 30, reviewed here)

• A Christmas Story (musical, G, closes Dec. 30, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Dead Accounts (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Feb. 24, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)

• The Mystery of Edwin Drood (musical, PG-13, most performances sold out last week, extended through Mar. 10, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (drama, PG-13/R, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• The Piano Lesson (drama, PG-13, closes Dec. 30, reviewed here)

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 6, reviewed here)

• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 13, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• Giant (musical, G/PG-13, closes Dec. 16, reviewed here)

“It’s one thing to develop a nostalgia for home while you’re boozing with Yankee writers in Martha’s Vineyard or being chased by the bulls in Pamplona. It’s something else to go home and visit with the folks in Reed’s drugstore on the square and actually listen to them. The reason you can’t go home again is not because the down-home folks are mad at you–they’re not, don’t flatter yourself, they couldn’t care less–but because once you’re in orbit and you return to Reed’s drugstore on the square, you can stand no more than fifteen minutes of the conversation before you head for the woods, head for the liquor store, or head back to Martha’s Vineyard, where at least you can put a tolerable and saving distance between you and home. Home may be where the heart is but it’s no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.”
Walker Percy, Lost In The Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (courtesy of Rod Dreher)