Sara Holdren Author Archive
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Sara Holdren

Theater Critic
See all their articles from across New York Magazine
@swholdren
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Sara Holdren is a theater director and a critic at New York magazine and Vulture.

  1. theater review
    Theater Review: Beetlejuice Is Best When It’s at Its Most AnticAlex Brightman has what it takes to fill this high-energy emcee’s role.
  2. theater review
    Theater Review: In Ink, What’s Black and White and Rupert All OverThe making of a tabloid mogul.
  3. theater review
    Theater Review: Can Tootsie Work When It’s Not 1982?Bubbly, clever lyrics can’t save a fundamentally flawed project.
  4. theater review
    Theater Review: An Affair Gone Toxic in The Pain of My BelligerenceHalley Feiffer wrote and stars in a play about a bad date that, over the years, gets worse and worse.
  5. theater review
    Theater Review: All About the Men in All My SonsAnnette Bening squeezes every bit of power out of a too-slight part.
  6. theater review
    Theater Review: Shakespeare, Riffed On Relentlessly, in GaryWith Nathan Lane as the titular clown.
  7. theater review
    Theater Review: A Transitory Journey to the Recent Past in Hillary and ClintonLaurie Metcalf and John Lithgow as the couple we all think we know.
  8. theater review
    Theater Review: The Songwriting and Storytelling Tours de Force of HadestownAncient myths, made absolutely fresh.
  9. theater reviews
    Theater Review: Men Behaving Bigly, in Burn This and SocratesAdam Driver looks giant up there onstage.
  10. theater review
    Theater Review: Counting One’s Way Through 17 Border CrossingsVisual ingenuity but the sketchlike structure sags.
  11. theater review
    Theater Review: The Dizzying Whirl of a Messy Texas Family in Plano“If you live in this world, time flies when you’re having the opposite of fun.”
  12. theater review
    Theater Review: Focus-Group Friction in Mrs. Murray’s MenagerieWithout vague distancing language like “problematic.”
  13. theater review
    The Brightness (and Badonkadonk) Amid the Menace: Re-Reviewing Oklahoma!This groundbreakingly dark production also contains a lot of joy, not to mention sex appeal.
  14. theater review
    Theater Review: Once More Into the Storm With King LearWith Glenda Jackson as the king.
  15. theater review
    Theater Review: John Doyle Strips The Cradle Will Rock Down to the Bare WoodJohn Doyle applies his tool kit to the 1937 agitprop play.
  16. theater review
    Theater Review: The Loopy, Barbed Office Satire of Do You Feel Anger?An empathy expert comes to a collections firm.
  17. theater review
    Theater Review: Debating What the Constitution Means to MeOur theater critic and Supreme Court correspondent parse the show’s transfer to Broadway.
  18. theater review
    Theater Review: A Julius Caesar That’s All Noble IdeasThe cast is cast.
  19. theater review
    Theater Review: Turning the Crash Into Entertainment With The Lehman TrilogyThe lead-up to the downfall.
  20. theater review
    Theater Review: Ain’t No Mo’ Is a Biting Farce That Takes FlightJordan Cooper’s new play is a suite of comic sketches.
  21. theater review
    Theater Review: A Temptations Bio-Musical and What Coulda BeenAin’t Too Proud: unbeatable songs and not much drama.
  22. theater review
    Theater Review: Suzan-Lori Parks’s White Noise Is Sneakily, Subtly RadicalWith the amazing Daveed Diggs at its center.
  23. theater review
    Theater Review: Can Kiss Me, Kate Survive a 2019 Gaze?Kelli O’Hara is nearly superhuman, and the highs in the show are very high. But you can’t get away from that script.
  24. theater review
    Theater Review: Be More Chill Does High-School Drama With Knowing WickednessA story that casts a realistic eye on the cruelties of youth, and on the way graduating from high school doesn’t mean the end of our insecurities.
  25. theater review
    Theater Review: Restrained Power in If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka“There’s a disturbing, powerful play hiding inside Tori Sampson’s If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka, but it hasn’t worked its way out yet.”
  26. theater review
    Review Roundup: At St. Ann’s, The B-Side Gives Voice to Forgotten MenPlus two well-intentioned misses.
  27. theater review
    Theater Review: Surface Tension by the Pool, in Jeremy O. Harris’s “Daddy”Louche life in Beverly Hills.
  28. spring theater
    Tony Kushner and Heidi Schreck Talk About What the Constitution Means to MeIn advance of Constitution’s transfer to Broadway, Kushner and Schreck talk about his favorite new play and its reverberations large and small.
  29. theater review
    Theater Review: Does Superhero Get Off the Ground?Theater Review: Does Superhero Get Off the Ground?
  30. theater review
    Theater Review: Creepers in Wonderland, in Alice by HeartShe’s late, apparently, for a very important date.
  31. theater review
    Theater Review: The Tightly Packed Power of Marys Seacole“An act of remembrance for the unremembered … a fierce, complex eulogy.”
  32. theater review
    Theater Review: Hurricane Diane, a Tragicomedy of Eco-CollapseA climate-saving tale that somehow reaches from ancient Greece to the housewives of Monmouth County, New Jersey.
  33. theater review
    Theater Review: Discovery and Rediscovery in By the Way, Meet Vera StarkAn overlooked (imagined) actress stands in for hundreds of lost Hollywood stories.
  34. theater review
    Theater Review: Fiasco Theater’s Lo-fi Reconstruction of Merrily We Roll AlongHow does it happen? Where is the moment?
  35. theater review
    Theater Review: The Tasteful Goodness of Sea Wall and A LifeJake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge do some tear-jerking at the Public.
  36. theater
    Theater Review: Rage and Love Times 3, in 2 Strindberg Classics and The LightRevivals of Mies Julie and The Dance of Death, plus Loy A. Webb’s new play.
  37. theater review
    Theater Review: A True West That Simmers Instead of Boiling OverA dose of restraint in a play that typically calls for amped-up intensity.
  38. theater review
    Theater Review: Eddie and Dave Tries to Get to What’s RealA deep and gender-flipped dive into Van Halen.
  39. theater review
    Theater Reviews: Northeast Prep and Southern Gothic in Choir Boy and Blue RidgeNew plays from Tarell Alvin McCraney and Abby Rosebrock.
  40. first person
    I Make Plays. I Write Criticism. I’m Not My Own Enemy.“The artist–critic war of attrition is boring. It’s a cliché.”
  41. theater review
    Aaron Sorkin’s To Kill a Mockingbird Adaptation Walks the WalkBartlet Sher and a superior cast bring a period piece into the present.
  42. off broadway
    Theater Review: Slave Play Blends the Terrifying and the TantalizingThis show understands a good twist.
  43. best of 2018
    Sara Holdren’s 10 Best Theater Productions of 2018New life for old Greeks and Oklahomans and civics-class speechifying.
  44. theater review
    Theater Review: Can a Cooled-Down Network Bring the Heat?Theater Review: Can a Cooled-Down Network Bring the Heat?
  45. theater review
    Theater Review: How Over-the-Top Should The Cher Show Be?Do you believe in life after life?
  46. theater review
    Theater Review: A Soft-Edged Production of Tom Stoppard’s The Hard ProblemTom Stoppard’s first new play in a decade gets a production that’s a little cuddlier than we’re accustomed to.
  47. theater review
    Theater Review: The Prom, Where Theater Geeks Belt Away Without ShameAnother funny meta-musical from the team behind ‘The Drowsy Chaperone.’
  48. theater review
    Theater Review: The Minor-Key K-Pop of Wild Goose DreamsHansol Jung’s play gets a fantastic, enveloping production.
  49. theater review
    Theater Review: Raúl Esparza Makes a Hard-to-Resist Arturo UiJohn Doyle’s customarily spare production makes Brecht great (again).
  50. theater review
    Theater Review: Is Will Eno’s Thom Pain (based on nothing) Still Revolutionary?Fourteen years later, it feels out-of-step.
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