About two hours after the Tyson-Lewis fight, after the arena had cleared out, after the final press conference, after 20,000 people had collectively shot some kind of cathartic wad of soul-semen and soul-pussy-juice, I found an exit and walked alone across a large, desolate parking lot and up a steep grass embankment. As usual I 
“People shouldn’t be going to plays,” says Ranevskaya somewhat ominously in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard—or that may just be Dianne Wiest’s performance. Should you have ever tossed and turned in grief at Marilyn Monroe never having the opportunity to play Chekhov, Wiest’s simpering performance is dedicated to you. There are, of course, more problems in this 
The insistent irony of the title Happy Hourshould be enough to tip audiences off to what to expect from the trio of Ethan Coen-penned one acts, staged at a glacial pace by Neil Pepe. Surprise! None of these characters are happy! And this collection is definitely not an hour. Things start off excruciatingly immediately, with the 
The original book to the 1965 On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is widely acknowledged as abysmal—but it is solely on the basis of that show and The Apple Tree that Barbara Harris’ towering status as an icon of musical theater rests. Not bad for a show that is frequently dismissed, despite its gorgeous score by Alan 
What people seem to ignore—or shrug off—in our mad for Mad Men times is that the past was not necessarily simpler. Under the lacquer of nostalgia lies a time of community, when grocery store clerks who sold you goods on credit existed in place of self-check-out aisles and neighbors greeted new arrivals with casseroles. But that same 
Manhattan Theatre Club has given theatergoers a lump of coal this holiday season with Close Up Space,a tedious new comedy-drama about editing, the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, feminist literature and family failures. That the cast includes pros like David Hyde Pierce and Rosie Perez makes the whole 80 minutes just that much sadder.Book editor Paul Barrow, 
