In announcing their presentation of Moliere’s riff on the Don Juan legend, The National Theater of the United States of America promised “a production so authentic that it rivals in authenticity Moliere’s own 1665 production at the Palais-Royal in Paris.” As we learn in an opening monologue, their tongue-in-cheek press release prompted one critic to sniff, “I see there is no translator mentioned. I assume you will be doing it in the original French.” Ah,......

FILM: Going to movies can sometimes suck a lot of time and money out of you. Which is why we love film shorts. They cater to our attention span, and in this case - our wallet, too. “Made in NY Shorts,” is a whold bunch of shorts that'll leave you filled up like you'd just seen a feature length. 2:30pm // New York Public Library, Donnell Media Center [20 W 53rd St] //Free READING: Francine......

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. When I started thinking about how to review Jean Cocteau Repertory’s new production of Moliere’s The Miser, I spent awhile mulling over something serious to structure my thoughts around, something going on in current affairs or some deep literary concept one could say runs through it.......

The past couple weeks have been a little slower than usual in Theatreland, with fewer openings, numerous closings, and performances on limited schedules. This week, as we all get back up to speed, there’s already quite a lot to choose from. Two unusual and intriguing festivals start on Thursday. Untitled Theater Company #61 is presenting the NEUROfest, which has theatre artists of all stripes performing pieces that revolve around neurological conditions like Tourette’s Syndrome (Welcome......

Since we haven’t been following the New York theatre scene for years and years, we’d rather not pontificate about how 2005 was overall for the art. Thinking about it now, it seems like it was pretty great, but that might just be our affectionate, soft-focus hindsight, plus we’re just crazy about theatre in general. And even though we see way more of it than most people we know, nytheatre.com’s season archives quickly reminded us......

On Sundays, Gothamist runs opinion pieces on issues relevant to life in New York. The views expressed below are solely those of the author. In the olden days of theater if a character masqueraded it was usually to conceal class or family affiliation, or maybe gender, in order to write in bawdy scenes of men in women's quarters. OK, that's a pretty broad generalization, but think of the costume ball sequence in Romeo and Juliet,......

The sun was still fairly well up in the sky when the New York Classical Theatre’s free outdoor performance of Moliere’s Scapin began on Saturday when Gothamist went to see it. By the end of the show dusk had settled in and the crew was using flashlights as footlights, but the lightness of the sky throughout much of it was just as well – the better to see this utterly delightful little performance. Plus......

Gothamist loves free theater in a park (any park!) as much as the next group-blog, but to be honest we've been left cold the last few times we've gone to see the stuff put up by the Public (it's been a problem ever since that ill-conceived star-studded production of The Seagull). And anyway the next show at the Delecorte doesn't start till the 16th and by then we're going to be too distracted by the......

Shakespeare in the Park doesn’t start until June 25, and if you’ve gone in past years you know that even when that wait is over, you’ll still have to wait in line for ages to get the show tickets. But even though the heat might be tempting you to duck into a nice cool theater, remember, it’s only going to get worse, so you might as well be outside while you can. And there are......