Andrea Lauer

Melissa Etheridge: My Window

October 17, 2023

Melissa Etheridge is a bona-fide superstar. So, why is this artist, used to appearing in huge venues, “slumming” in a Broadway theater with a capacity of less than 800? Let’s not look this gift horse in the mouth. This is a gem of an opportunity to see Etheridge up close and personal in her My Window autobiographical show at the Circle in the Square. This is a memoir in song, songs that sprang from her adventurous life that went from entertaining in saloons to becoming a lesbian icon and a major rock concert star. [more]

Melissa Etheridge Off Broadway: My Window – A Journey Through Life

October 19, 2022

Etheridge may be 61, but she sounds just as she did when she first came on the American rock scene in 1988: full-throated emotion and raspy vocals that bring honesty and pathos to intensely personal and confessional lyrics. The accomplishment in "Melissa Etheridge Off Broadway: My Window – A Journey Through Life" is not in the many scenes of heartache and a dense song list, but in the strength and the resilience that carries her to artistry that she shares so unselfishly and unselfconsciously to speak to and heal a legion of fans. [more]

New York City Center’s 2021 Fall for Dance Festival: Programs 1 and 2

October 19, 2021

The final work on Program 1 was its finest. A.I.M. By Kyle Abraham presented its director’s “Our Indigo: If We Were a Love Song,” a deeply moving paean to the darker meanings of love. It was choreographed to Nina Simone’s glorious renditions of six songs in which she wrapped her moving contralto around the lyrics of “Don’t Explain,” “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,” and “Little Girl Blue.” The opening moments found the seven-member cast gathered in a dramatically lit upstage corner—moody lighting designed by Dan Scully—bending and reaching, dispersing only to return to their sculptural starting image. [more]

Emma and Max

October 19, 2018

Solondz’s mordant wit makes this the darkness of tragicomedies. Brooke and Jay’s delusions so typical of white entitlement are entire their own. When we finally hear from Brittany, she turns out to be a keen observer of entitled white behavior and middle-class liberal hypocrisy. Though we never meet Emma and Max except on Brooke’s baby cam, their off-stage presence is felt throughout the play. As Solondz’s movies contain brilliantly written dialogue, he is a natural for the theater. While his movies are made up of mostly two character scenes, this technique transfers beautifully to the stage. The only flaw here is that the monologues which become rants go on a bit too long, long after we get the gist and the characters given their many prejudices away. A bit of skillful trim – or the invention of more ideas would make this an even more powerful play. [more]

Fruit Trilogy

June 14, 2018

Her newest work, "Fruit Trilogy," an evening of three one acts, “Pomegranate,” “Avocado” and “Coconut,” has all of the strengths and weaknesses of her previous stage plays which include going on at too great length when the audience has already gotten the point. Directed by Mark Rosenblatt who staged the world premiere at the United Kingdom’s West Yorkshire Playhouse, the play features Kiersey Clemons and Liz Mikel who are frightening in their intensity and realism. Although the three settings are unstated, the fact that both actresses are black suggests that the plays may have been inspired by Ensler’s humanitarian work in Africa. Although it will not be immediately obvious to theatergoers, the plays move from two women enslaved, to a woman traveling to freedom, to finally a woman finding liberation through her own body. [more]

The Boy Who Danced On Air

May 27, 2017

It is set in present-day rural Afghanistan. Several years earlier, Paiman as a child was sold by his father to the well to do Jahandar. The two have an intense emotional and physical involvement that must soon cease, as Paiman is soon to marry because he is approaching manhood. Feda, Zemar, the dancing boy of Zemar, Jahandar’s droll, and mean cousin, is also aging out. Paiman and Feda fall in love and that instigates several conflicts. [more]

Blueprint Specials

January 10, 2017

Never before seen on mainland U.S.A, the current show is an amalgam of the four existing shows ("P.F.C. Mary Brown;" "Hi, Yank!;" "About Face" and "OK, USA") of the six that were written. Directed and adapted by Tom Ridgely, co-artistic director of Waterwell, the entertaining show is a co-production of Waterwell in association with the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum under the auspices of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival. Performed on the hangar deck of the USS Intrepid just like it might have been done in 1944 or 1945, the show is a site-specific environmental production with limited scenery but using a combination of Broadway stars and featured players, Waterwell members, Active Duty U.S. military and veterans, and Reserve Special Members. The dance chorus is provided by the Limón Dance Company. [more]

The School for Scandal

April 30, 2016

Red Bull Theater which has specialized in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedies has moved on to the 18th century with Marc Vietor’s exquisite and stylish revival of "The School for Scandal," Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s famous but rarely revived classic comedy of manners. With impeccable casting and a pitch-perfect production team, this School is as witty, delightful and accessible as one could wish. The 18th century look of the play is both historic and satiric. Anna Louizos’ clever settings transform one into the other with the turn of a wall or a door and a rearrangement of the furniture, highlighted by Russell H. Champa’s lighting. Her witty use of props (a chamber pot, a trunk, empty picture frames) adds to the fun. [more]

Fulfillment

September 24, 2015

"Fulfillment" by the always surprising Thomas Bradshaw is about anything but the contentment and success implied by its ironic title. The Flea Theater’s production, directed to emphasize its undercurrents of eroticism and anger by Ethan McSweeny, is both shocking and sad. The audience witnesses the almost classically Greek downfall of a man done in by his own weaknesses. Anger, lust, pride and greed does in the central character. [more]