Matt Wolf

“The evening descends by degrees into a ferocious, self-destructive battle of the sexes.”

“At which point, this Crucible seems less an anatomy of America than a requiem for it.”

“But it’s the vaunted arc of Zola’s 1867 novel to culminate in a body count that begins to rival that of Hamlet but without much – in this re-telling by British playwright Helen Edmundson – in the way of nuanced introspection.”

“One only wishes that the score were less generic – a second-act duet between Barrie and Sylvia is especially vapid – and that the writing were as piquant as the stagecraft.”

“It's Mirren's shrewd yet affectionate portrayal of a monarch-made-flesh that looks poised to take the town.”

“Others may wonder whether so scattershot a piece of writing would have got this far without its physically rangy, bespectacled star attached.”

“Out of this cat’s cradle comes a dissection of the byways of desire that finds neither Gyllenhaal nor McGregor ideally cast.”

“But whereas the film exudes a darkly comic, breezy elan, this adaptation emerges as hard-edged and comparatively charmless – and not nearly as funny as it should be.”

“"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness," we are told in Beckett, and so it is with this very fine play where laughter exists a heartbeat, or heartbreak, away from tears.”

“Would Washington bring the energy and intensity required to play the dreamy, often feckless Chicago chauffeur? The answer, for the most part, is yes.”

“Extended through June 8 to meet ticket demand, this “Betrayal” represents a benchmark achievement for everyone involved, and shows Pinter’s 1978 play in a revealing, even radical, new light.”

“This Betrayal could use more of the same.”

“And at the show’s capacious heart, one can only thrill to the tiny yet mightily determined Shapiro as she takes the audience on Matilda’s journey from a surrounding loutishness and neglect through to a world of learning, literature and, by the final curtain, love.”