25 years ago, when A.R. Gurney wrote The Dining Room, the customs he portrayed were bordering on quaint. Today, those customs are positively antiquated.

( Please bear with us while we sort out formatting problems that for the moment are causing an excess of italics)

25 years on, Gerard Alessandrini 's Forbidden Broadway-this version called Rude Awakening- is still popping the bubbles of musicals on the Great White Way. If this incarnation is somewhat tamer, put the blame (for the most part), on the musicals being skewered

Kate Foydor's 100 Saints You Should Know is a well-made, but ultimately,forgettable, drama. That said, there is a moment of theater, that is truly cathartic.

Playwright Horton Foote is amazing: Here he is is 92-years young and instead of worrying about his own affairs of (e)state, he's conjured up Dividing the Estate, a richly detailed and absorbing work, smack dab about what its title implies.

The Atlantic Theatre Company has an excellent track record for coming up with entertaining plays. But, not so this time, with Scarcity. The show appears to exist solely to shock (us)...

Leo Tolstoy's most acclaimed work, The Power of Darkness, comes across more overwrought than transporting, in this Mint Theater production. Relentless could be its mantra

Ian McKellen shines in the title role of this Royal Shakespeare Company production of King Lear, on at BAM's Harvey Theatre

The Royal Shakespeare Company, via BAM. gives us a sturdy rendering of Chekhov's moody masterpiece The Seagull. Ian McKellen is compelling in the mostly comic role of Sorin

With Edge, Paul Alexander gives us a more manic Sylvia Plath( Angelica Torn) than we're used to seeing. And portrays her husband as the epitome of evil

Steve Ross is playing the Oak Room at the Algonquin-need we say more. Yes, he's doing the songs of Stephen Sondheim