A call for the 92nd Street Y to reconsider its decision and maintain 92Y Tribeca, from Richard Brody: http://nyr.kr/11jvrZi

Hilton Als on the world defined by “funky-smelling claustrophobia and lies” in David Cromer’s play, “Really Really”: http://nyr.kr/YeqZW2

Photograph by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times/Redux.

Michael Schulman on Barney Frank’s role in a revival of “Fiorello!”: http://nyr.kr/Z0Rf6W

Photograph by Walter McBride/Broadway World.

(Source: newyorker.com)

This year’s Ten Best List might be called “Lahr’s Last Huzzah.” When I began as Senior Critic, in 1992, the second show I reviewed was Clifford Odets’s “Awake and Sing,” in Chicago. Odets seemed to me a woefully overlooked major writer. Over the decades, I’ve also reviewed Odets’s “Flowering Peach,” “The Country Girl,” and written a Critic at Large about him. The last show of my twenty-year New Yorker joyride was Odets’s “Golden Boy”—Lincoln Center’s masterly production which indisputably puts Odets in the pantheon of great twentieth-century playwrights. In a good theatregoing year, you’re lucky to get one production of such exhilarating high quality; this year, I got two—the second being Mike Nichols’s inspired revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” They share first place…

Click-through for John Lahr on the top 10 plays of 2012: http://nyr.kr/SiLv9F

Hilton Als reviews “A Civil War Christmas”: http://nyr.kr/11GjUks

Photograph by Carol Rosegg.

(Source: newyorker.com)

After twenty years as The New Yorker’s chief theatre critic, John Lahr will give up regular reviewing to focus on the Profiles he also contributes to the magazine, as well as on book projects.

Click-through for more on Lahr at The New Yorker, and for links to some of Lahr’s favorite pieces that he has written for the magazine.

Photograph by Jill Krementz.

Sometimes it’s just weird. Weird to sit in a theatre—a world in which the not obvious is made obvious—and see a director’s influences trump his own vision. 

“Putting an Essay Onstage”: Hilton Als on Daniel Fish’s “House for Sale”: http://nyr.kr/TE5q36 

Photograph by Carol Rosegg.

“Habit” is a ninety-minute mock-realist melodrama with three characters that is performed on loop for eight consecutive hours, ten days straight. The acting is largely improvisational: there are no stage directions or cues, but the actors must say the precise words in the script…

Anna Altman reviews David Levine’s “Habit”: http://nyr.kr/SUAu8q

Since “The Exonerated” premièred, in 2002, Jacobs has been played by a number of actors, including Jill Clayburgh, Mia Farrow, Susan Sarandon, Brooke Shields, Marlo Thomas, and Amy Irving. This week, she steps into the role herself, for the play’s tenth-anniversary production, at the Bleecker Theatre. Jacobs answered our questions about capital punishment, the difficulties of playing herself, and finding love with another death-row survivor…

Michael Schulman interviews Sunny Jacobs: http://nyr.kr/QedmoJ

Aside from producing some of the magazine’s funniest humor pieces, Paul Rudnick has written such plays as “Jeffrey” and “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told” and screenplays for “Addams Family Values” and “In & Out,” among others. His latest stage project is “Cabin Pressure,” a one-act monologue that opened this week as part of the series “Summer Shorts,” at 59E59. (It shares a bill with a musical about real estate and a breakup drama by Neil LaBute.) Peter Bartlett stars as a celebrity-obsessed flight attendant receiving a medal of valor from the President—for a feat of heroism that turns out to be somewhat less than heroic. We spoke to Paul about the play, the plight of the flight attendant, and space diapers.  Click-through to read the conversation: http://nyr.kr/NkzqMY