Zoë Winters, Eli Gelb, Molly Ranson, Nate Mann, and Hale Appleman in Jonathan Spector's Birthright, directed by Teddy Bergman at MCC Theater. Photo: Emilio Madrid Jonathan Spector’s new play Birthright—just opened at MCC Theater in a sharp, superbly acted production directed by Teddy Bergman—is way more absorbing than you might expect from an incessantly talky and disputatious, 3 ½-hour drama about American Jewish identity. This astute and remarkably moving work follows 6 Jew

(l. to r. foreground) LaChanze (Lady Capulet), Glenn Fleshler (Lord Capulet), Jessica Pimentel (Prince Escalus), Jason Manuel Olazabal (Lord Montague), Mariand Torres (Lady Montague) in Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, directed by Saheem Ali, Delacorte Theater. Photo: Joan Marcus. For the second time in two years, a flashy, big-budget Romeo and Juliet has opened in New York that’s so bent on pleasing one particular target audience with shallowly conceived staging gimmicks that i

Daniel Radcliffe in Every Brilliant Thing, Hudson Theatre. Photo Matthew Murphy Once again, the forsythias are in bloom, and that means new openings are arriving way too fast for me to write full reviews on everything I see. Here, then, are some shorter takes, euphoric, admiring, and otherwise. Innocence The Metropolitan Opera Innocence by Kaija Saariaho, libretto by Sofi Oksanen, directed by Simon Stone. Photo: Karen Almond/Met Opera Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence is a haunting