Twice a month, critics Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal; Elisabeth Vincentelli, contributor to The New York Times, The Village Voice, and The New Yorker; and Peter Marks of The Washington Post, get together on their Three on the Aisle podcast to address the major issues brewing in the American theatre.
On the latest episode, the panel’s guest is acclaimed singer-songwriter Erin McKeown, who is making her first foray into musical theater with Miss You Like Hell, the musical having its New York debut this month at the Public Theater. McKeown—pronounced “MC-Kyone”—talks about the collaboration she’s forged with the Pulitzer winning playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes (Water by the Spoonful) to tell the story of a mom played by Daphne Rubin-Vega who goes on a road trip with her long-estranged teenage daughter.
After that bracing conversation, Vincentelli, Teachout, and Marks devote a segment to analyses of two recent Broadway openings that have sparked Tony buzz in the theatre world: first, they talk about the revival of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, starring Laurie Metcalf, Alison Pill and Glenda Jackson, in her first Broadway appearance in 30 years. And then they shift to the powerful new staging from London’s National Theatre of Tony Kushner’s two-part Angels in America.
Next, as always, the critics offer their insights and recommendations concerning plays and musicals you might want to keep an eye out for, in New York and across the country. Vincentelli focuses on the technically adroit Yerma from Britain, now at Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory; Marks tips his hat to a revival of Brian Friel’s Translations at Washington, D.C.’s Studio Theatre, and Teachout elucidates his endorsement of Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero, playing to great notices at Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre.
Listen to all this, and more, on the latest installment of Three on the Aisle.
Download the latest episode here. Have comments or requests for what the critics should talk about? Email them at threeontheaisle@gmail.com, or go to @threeontheaisle on Twitter.
