Archive

Mexodus

October 2, 2025

Actors and musicians Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson have written a dynamic, exciting new two-character hip-hop musical in "Mexodus," a telling of the little known story of the Underground Railroad that went South to Mexico. It may also be the first New York musical to use live-looping for its soundtrack, with both musicians playing multiple instruments as well. "Mexodus" not only tells the tale of a Texas slave who escapes to Mexico but also the stories of both of its performers. The current relevance of the show to our immigration situation cannot be underestimated. [more]

From Trinity to Trinity

September 30, 2025

Among her most haunting and meditative works is the slim yet searing "From Trinity to Trinity," an autobiographical pilgrimage undertaken in 1999 to the Trinity Site in New Mexico where the world’s first atomic bomb was tested. It is, in essence, a journey back to the beginning of the end. Published in 2000 and rendered into English by Eiko Otake—half of the hauntingly expressive performance duo Eiko & Koma—the work was later published in 2010, bringing Hayashi’s voice to new ears, and new hearts. But it was in 2009 that Eiko, recognizing the performative potential and piercing immediacy of Hayashi’s words, reached out to the accomplished New York-based actress Ako—known for her roles in "Shogun," "God Said This," and "Snow Falling on Cedars," and the visionary founder of the Amaterasu Za theater company. Eiko posed a proposition: Could this text—so personal, so painful, so charged with historical weight—be embodied on stage as a one-person play? The answer, though tentative and reverent, was yes. It is Ako’s own adaptation for the stage that she performs today. [more]

The Cherry Orchard

September 30, 2025

The production by Adult Film, in association with BKE Productions, incorporates a multimedia approach to telling the story, based on a translation and adaptation by John Christopher Jones, who appears as the character Firs in filmed sequences. The show is dedicated to him, as he passed away before the show was scheduled to open. Ryan Czerwonko, the artistic director of Adult Film, is both the director of this production and plays Ermolai Alexeyevitch Lophakin, the son and grandson of serfs once owned by the estate, who has now become a very successful merchant. Lophakin is the principal protagonist of the tale who will resolve the fate of the cherry orchard and the estate. The ensemble of actors beautifully embodies the characters, exploring some of the subtler elements of their personalities. [more]

Last Call, A Play with Cocktails

September 28, 2025

The conceit is clever: each performance takes place in a real home, the precise address dispatched only the day before, like a speakeasy or secret society. A password grants entry. There’s a frisson to ringing an unfamiliar doorbell in a neighborhood you’ve selected but don’t know, expecting to be welcomed inside. And welcomed you are—by a host (a literal homeowner, not an actor), who hands you a letter (“Congratulations on leaving the comfort and safety of your homes during this crisis…”) and offers wine and chatter before ushering you toward a makeshift audience configuration: a scatter of couches, dining chairs, bar stools, forty-some options in all, arranged with deliberate casualness. Just as you begin to wonder how, exactly, this will become a play, your (bar)Tender arrives. He’s late. He’s distraught. He’s encased—hilariously, ominously—in the hard shell of a full-sized USPS mailbox, which he declares is “protective gear.” (A detail as absurd as it is revealing—after all, in a crumbling state, even the mail must wear armor.) [more]

This Is Not a Drill

September 27, 2025

You may recall that on January 13, 2018, Hawaii residents including tourists received an alert that a ballistic missile had been spotted on the way to the islands. You may also recall that it was later reported as a drill only for security workers, and that the alert was over after 38 minutes. Songwriter Holly Doubet remembers that day as she was visiting the islands and has not forgotten the minutes pondering her impending death. This is the premise of The York Theatre’s new musical 'This Is a Not a Drill," conceived by Doubet with book by Joseph McDonough and Doubet, and a 15 song score by Doubet, Kathy Babylon and John Vester. A pleasant enough entertainment, there is no urgency except for the hysterical characters at the Hibiscus Resort and Hotel who take the alert seriously. We know, of course, that it was false, so the authors have made their plot out of "Love Boat," "Hotel" or "White Lotus" multiple storylines with each couple having their own crisis. Unfortunately, the characters and their problems are all clichés and stereotypes which all end happily, Hawaii being a place for solving one’s problems. It might have been more exciting dramatically if some of these plots had not had happy endings. [more]

Country Roads, Quiet Rooms, and Inner Weight: Two Plays in Conversation

September 24, 2025

As TheaterScene.net approaches its 24th anniversary, I’ve been reflecting not only on the shows we cover but also on how they speak to one another across the season. Sometimes two productions, opening within days of each other, unexpectedly illuminate common ground. This past week, seeing "let’s talk about anything else" (reviewed by Victor Gluck) and "The Porch on Windy Hill" (reviewed by Joseph Pisano), I couldn’t help but notice how these seemingly different works echo each other in intriguing ways. [more]

Blood Orange

September 22, 2025

"Blood Orange" by Abigail Duclos is a play dealing with the ultimate consequences of trauma in the lives of two adolescent girls, with a third acting as a contrast. Vernice Miller skillfully directs three excellent actors in exploring how some teenage girls manage the challenges of adolescence when faced with tragedy and physical and psychological abuse. Miller and Duclos have added an interesting element to this production by having the three principals perform in repertory. It is a dark, disturbing drama worth experiencing. [more]

let’s talk about anything else

September 22, 2025

Whether Anthony Anello’s "let’s talk about anything else" is a dark comedy, or a thriller with horror overtones, or drama about the effects of guilt, it is the sort of play that doesn’t need its first act which is used simply to introduce the characters with the play really beginning in its second act. However, it isn’t very good at introducing its characters as it takes a long time to find out the names of the seven friends on stage. It does have a smashing and shocking ending suggesting the lengthy play has a good story that needs to be reworked and shortened. [more]

The Wild Duck

September 21, 2025

The latest revival has been directed by Simon Godwin, artistic director of Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, in a co-production with Theatre for a New Audience. This revival uses the contemporary version by David Eldridge, first seen at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2005 which combines some of the minor characters, shortening the cast list. While the text is clear, the uneven acting and interpretation of the characters undermines the play’s powerful and tragic resolution. [more]

The Porch on Windy Hill

September 19, 2025

There's a palpably tragic tension between Edgar and Mira, which the play's quartet of writers--Sherry Stregack Lutken, Lisa Helmi Johanson, Morgan Morse, and David M. Lutken--naturally let develop, trusting the actors (and, in Lutken's case, himself) to convey it in fraught silences. But "The Porch on Windy Hill" is no joyless drama; it also includes lots of glorious, soul-stirring sound, which buffers the characters' pain through a heady musical mélange that links everyone on the stage, even when they seem worlds apart. A classical violinist, Mira's talent originated from the long-ago example of her grandfather's expert banjo and guitar pickin', while her beautiful singing voice, similar to Edgar's, is much more candid than her speaking one. No mellifluous slouch himself, Beckett joins Mira and Edgar in a series of stringed reveries that run the gamut from Haydn to bluegrass and, as music often does, take up the emotional slack when regular words don't come easily. [more]

Relative Stranger

September 19, 2025

Director Ryan Cunningham has helped Ms. Ali shape the show into a strong piece of theater. There are sound cues (it's raining so you hear rain, that sort of thing) and it helps make it feel less like standup and more like a show. Overall, Relative Stranger is a solid evening of theater. Here's hoping the short run extends, or maybe gets adapted into a series. The story is worth it. [more]

The Essentialisn’t

September 17, 2025

"The Essentialisn’t" is a complex piece. Davis explores a world of uncertainty and finds her voice while seeking to answer one question: can you be Black and not perform? This question is ultimately unanswerable, and so the show doesn’t try. The personal anecdotes and philosophizing are rarely satisfying, often not building to anything in particular, but the show stays entertaining and interesting off the back of Davis’ force of personality. [more]

we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism

September 16, 2025

Jennifer Kidwell’s "we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism" is not so much a theatrical production as it is a revelation—an offering, a conjuring, a glittering séance of self-examination draped in velvet and lit by the shimmer of a slightly crooked chandelier. Co-conspirators Kidwell and Brandon Kazen-Maddox are not here to collect, as the title slyly suggests. No, far from it. They have arrived bearing gifts: extravagant, irreverent, and comforting…gifts of laughter, of vulnerability, of truth. Gifts that ask nothing in return but your full, unguarded presence. Premiering at The Flea Theater in TriBeCa, this audacious production gleefully dismantles the social and economic scaffolding that props up our daily lives, only to replace it with something far more anarchic, more tender, and ultimately more human. [more]

Lady Patriot

September 16, 2025

Ted Lange’s "Lady Patriot" reunites the author/director with his cast mates from The Love Boat series, Jill Whelan and Fred Grandy. Leaving that aside as it has little to do with his new historical play, the third in Lange’s American history trilogy, "Lady Patriot" is based on true events that took place in the Jefferson Davis White House and the neighboring house, the Elizabeth Van Lew Mansion, in Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War, 1861 – 1865. While the play purports to tell the story of the leak in the Davis cabinet and the successful Union spying ring in the Confederacy in Richmond, it lacks urgency and tension even at the end when the Confederacy is about to come to an end. Told in 18 short scenes, the play could use a good deal of pruning of its two and a half hour running time. [more]

Color Theories

September 16, 2025

And by the time we arrive at "Fantasmas"—his 2024 HBO series that feels less like television and more like a guided tour through the psyche of a queer mystic armed with a glitter pen and a penchant for unresolved metaphor—it becomes abundantly clear that Torres is not dabbling in a style so much as building a universe. "Color Theories," then, is not an outlier but an extension—another window into that universe, pastel-hued and ever-so-slightly haunted. But don’t call it a play—at least not in the Off Broadway sense. Call it a chromatic séance, a theatrical mood board, or perhaps a dispatch from the dreamworld of a lonely child with a glitter pen and a grudge against Helvetica. [more]

Hucka

September 15, 2025

The background on the story indicates that "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain was an inspiration for the story, but the only connections to that book seem to be the idea of traveling on a river and speaking a dialect of English typically associated with poorly educated people. Two examples of the form are in the first two scenes. Hucka (Brooke Elizabeth) in the opening monologue says, “I don haf ta pay hardly pay no attention to ‘em." And in the next scene, Cain (Carson Merrick) says, "Ya tol me ya war gointa finish this ‘fore sunup.” [more]

House of McQueen

September 12, 2025

Crafted with sensitivity and spectacle by playwright Darrah Cloud and brought to life with unflinching precision by director Sam Helfrich, "House of McQueen" dares to unravel the mythos of the late, great Alexander McQueen (1969–2010), the enfant terrible of British fashion. Here, the theater becomes both confessional and catwalk, memory palace and mausoleum, as the production careens through the designer's short but incandescent life. McQueen's nephew, Gary James McQueen, serving as Creative Director, lends the production an air of intimacy and authenticity rarely achieved in biographical theater. This is no sanitized tribute, no saccharine memorial. It is raw. It is fractured. It is McQueen. [more]

Sober Songs

September 12, 2025

Still, for a piece that purports to tackle the complexity of addiction, "Sober Songs" often fails to excavate its deepest layers. Relapses, romantic entanglements, suicidal ideation, and earnest confessions flit across the stage, but many are handled with a frustrating brevity, giving the sense that we are skimming the surface of lives meant to be far more turbulent than the book or score allows them to be. [more]

Exorcistic: The Rock Musical

September 9, 2025

This self-aware parody depicts a show within a show, where the cast breaks the fourth wall, comes out and greets the audience, and tells us they’re about to put this thing on. With tongues so firmly planted in cheeks, they’d probably bite right through them, they regale us with reservations and caveats galore. There’s a possessed young girl, Megan (Emma Hunton), her movie-star mom, Kate (Leigh Wulff), a coupla priests (Ethan Crystal and Jesse Merlin), a glittery demonic “Rowdy” (Steven Cutts), and a woeful stage manager (Jaime Lyn Beatty). Playwright/composer/lyricist Michael Shaw Fisher exercises his acting chops in a couple of roles. You’d think enough mayhem would be in store for the cast as it embarks on this ramshackle enterprise, but all (ahem) hell breaks loose when an actor actually becomes possessed. [more]

Oil & Whiskey

September 7, 2025

"Oil & Whiskey" is a new musical that won the "Sold Out Award" at the 2025 NYC Fringe Festival. The music by Kit Nolan, principal keyboardist and musical director for award-winning violinist Lindsey Stirling, is uniformly excellent, filled with great melodies and foot-stomping country delights. It compares well to the sadly closed "Dead Outlaw." The book and lyrics by Dax Wiley are not quite on the same level but sometimes reach the highs of the music. [more]

The Life and Death of King John

September 1, 2025

An element of the story is the behavior of the English noblemen. They switch allegiances depending on the behavior of either King John or King Philip II. It is not easy to follow these shifting loyalties in the context of the internecine conflict being played out, and this is made more difficult by the fact that many of the characters are portrayed by the same actors. Since some in the ensemble are tasked with playing two or three characters, this introduces an element of confusion in the production. Given the constraints imposed by the need to play multiple characters, the cast makes a solid effort to achieve a reasonable level of transparency. [more]

Twelfth Night (Free Shakespeare in the Park)

August 31, 2025

When the play begins those who know the original will recognize that Ali has edited the text: the first two scenes have been flipped which makes perfect sense letting us know that Viola, the heroine, has been shipwrecked off the coast of Illyria, and that she has lost her twin brother Sebastian. (She decides to dress in male clothing in order to see the lay of the land as a single woman in a foreign country.) Unfortunately some of the other edits, including the most famous scene in the play in which the unloved puritan Malvolio reads out loud the forged letter he has received with the famous lines “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em,” are mistakes. Much of the edited material makes the play dark so the intent may have been to soften the play’s somber side, though it does eliminate much of the characters’ best material. [more]

Amaze

August 31, 2025

British illusionist Jamie Allan has brought his aptly named magic show "Amaze" to New World Stages and it is truly awesome. His act is so low key that one doesn’t at first realize how remarkable his tricks are taking many familiar and famous magic acts one step further – like the card trick with a deck of blank cards. He also uses his show to build the theory that children are more susceptible to magic and illusion and that we all need to return to our childhood memories and imaginations. [more]

Ava: The Secret Conversations

August 25, 2025

American actress Elizabeth McGovern is best known today for her role as Lady Cora, Countess of Grantham, in the long-running "Downton Abbey" series. However, she is also an Academy-Award winning nominee for her performance in the film of "Ragtime" as chorus girl and actress Evelyn Nesbitt. Since the early 1990s when she moved to London, she has often appeared on the West End stage. Now she has come to our shores as Hollywood icon Ava Gardner in a play of her own devising: "Ava: The Secret Conversations," adapted from the 2013 book of the same name by celebrity journalist Peter Evans and Gardner herself. Although not the first name that comes to mind when one thinks of actresses to impersonate sex symbol Gardner, McGovern is charming and surprising, profane and coy, an independent woman who knows her own mind and has a great deal to say. She gives off flashes of fireworks along with the witty dialogue taken from Gardner’s own words. She is not only convincing but sympathetic as she recounts the mistakes and tragedies in her life. On stage throughout is Aaron Costa Ganis as British journalist Evans who we don’t learn as much about but makes an interesting foil for the flamboyant Gardner, even in these later years after her screen fame. [more]

Road Kills

August 21, 2025

The two characters at the center of the story are Owen (D.B. Milliken) and Jaki (Mia Sinclair Jenness). Owen is a man in his late 20s who works as the roadkill collector in a rural county in Wisconsin. Jaki is a 20-year-old woman who is doing a six-week sentence for a drunk driving violation. What unfolds over the course of the play is how these two very different people discover an emotional connection neither had ever considered which is at the core of empathy: the understanding and sharing of someone’s feelings. [more]

Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride

August 20, 2025

At the beginning of his eponymous Broadway foray, "Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride," the self-styled insult comic promises a catharsis, which seems like an obvious setup to soon mock the forlorn theater geeks sprinkled among an audience predominantly there to see Ross unleash the "Roastmaster General" persona he's cultivated over more than a quarter century of televised potshots at dais-trapped celebrities. But, it turns out the joke is on all of us. While Ross doesn't completely abandon his sophomoric shtick, it's also not the heart of his show, which has an unexpectedly big one. [more]

Sulfur Bottom

August 20, 2025

Part of the problem with the play is that it attempts to cover too many topics in the form of a domestic tragedy: pollution, industrial waste, climate change, toxic chemicals, poverty, red-lining, foreclosures, destruction of animals, etc. It also cannot make up its mind whether its style is realism, surrealism, expressionism, symbolism or even magic realism. Many of the elements seem extraneous, tangential or not fully unified to the plot such as the talking animals. There is an interesting play hiding in this material but the playwright does not seem to know how to shape his ideas and wants to cover everything in this one play. [more]

The Animals Speak

August 16, 2025

While the ensemble is solid in their portrayals of the characters, the play lacks a clear dramatic line regarding the main point of the story. Bossert's portrayal of Disney and his emotional struggles appears to provide the scaffolding for a story that, in reality, is about Lillian Disney and her influence on the decisions that will ultimately be attributed to Walt. Her careful guidance of Walt's presentation style ultimately enabled him to speak in public with greater confidence and engage more effectively with his audience. Her conversations and skillful guidance of Mary Blair's view of herself as an artist, independent of her husband, led to Mary's increased confidence in herself and ultimately to Walt's recognition of her talent. [more]

Alan Turing & The Queen of the Night

August 15, 2025

There’s a lot going on in this new musical about Alan Turing—and perhaps too much. In attempting to encompass the breadth of Turing’s extraordinary life, the production ends up overwhelmed by its own ambition. It is too long to sustain its narrative with somewhat underdeveloped characters, and too short to provide the necessary depth to the relationships that are meant to drive its emotional core. [more]

Rolling Thunder: A Rock Journey

August 15, 2025

Do we need another jukebox musical? In the case of "Rolling Thunder: A Rock Journey," the answer is a wavering yes. Written with more insight than usual by Bryce Hallett, with musical direction by Sonny Paladino, "Rolling Thunder" manages to find a fresh way to bring that era to life, opening with a brash burst of music (“Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf) and a period newscast of Nixon explaining why the war was expanding—contrary to growing public anti-war sentiment. The title refers to the sudden savage saturation bombing campaign against North Vietnam 60 years ago. [more]

well, i’ll let you go

August 10, 2025

"well, i’ll let you go," Bubba Weiler’s exquisitely devastating new work, staged with unpretentious yet profound grace by director Jack Serio leading a magnificent cast at the Space at Irondale in Brooklyn is, in a word, haunting. The play unfolds as a poignant, slow-burning elegy to ordinary lives and the extraordinary grief that can shatter them. It is a tender meditation on loss, memory, and the fragile architecture of community—one that both embraces and exposes the complex, often contradictory, human heart. [more]

Lili/Darwin

August 6, 2025

"Lili/Darwin" is a captivating one-woman show from writer/performer Darwin Del Fabro ("They/Them," "A Midsummer Night’s Dream") that explores her own transition as well as that of Danish painter Lili Elbe, with Del Fabro playing both in alternating segments. Elbe was a trans woman in the 1920s/30s and one of the first people to ever get sex reassignment surgery. Del Fabro reads from the painter’s posthumously published journals as a way to reimagine Elbe’s innermost moments contrasted with those of her own. At the same time, she maintains the dramatic distinction between herself and the Danish painter. [more]

Gene & Gilda

August 4, 2025

The show deals with the emotional impact of their not being able to have children after a series of miscarriages, and finally leading to the diagnosis of ovarian cancer. Gitter adds emotional depth to the story with an understanding and sensitivity to the affection Gene and Gilda had for each other in these moments of stress, culminating in an ending that underscores their love. [more]

Ginger Twinsies

July 27, 2025

Kevin Zak’s 'Ginger Twinsies" now at the Orpheum Theatre is an outrageous, campy gay stage parody of the 1998 Lindsay Lohan (a true redhead) remake of "The Parent Trap" in which she played fraternal twins, directed by rom-com specialist Nancy Meyers. Much of the humor is based on name dropping of pop culture, film, stage and television lore with “appearances” by Vanessa Redgrave, Demi Moore, Shirley MacLaine, Julianne Moore and Jessica Lee Curtis as well as Ms. Meyers herself. A great many gags come from the Harry Potter movies as well as Curtis in "Freaky Friday" and a plug for her new "Freakier Friday" opening on August 1. You don’t have to know "The Parent Trap" to enjoy the jokes as much of the humor is visual but it helps set up the premise. The laughs come once a minute but not all of them land as successfully as they are meant to. [more]

Joy: A New True Musical

July 26, 2025

Under Lorin Latarro’s direction, there is little or no character development in Davenport’s book, with all of the characters remaining the same throughout, and the only thing that propels the show are the surprising events that happen. Joy’s family remains negative and dismissive about her inventing career (while eventually helping out in the marketing) until almost the very end. Davenport fudges the last scene by not telling us how the biased Texas judge ends up ruling in Joy’s favor so that the ending leaves us hanging. When the judge demeans Joy as a one-time inventor, we know that she has one of her clever inventions in her pocket (a reflective dog flea collar) but she never takes it out in her own defense. The songs are more like window dressing than adding much to the show and Milazzo’s generic lyrics tend to be very repetitious and give away their message in their titles. The show might have been more powerful as a straight play without the musical score. [more]

David Cassidy … Some Questions Answered

July 22, 2025

Some 30 years have passed since I ghost-wrote David Cassidy’s autobiography, “C’Mon Get Happy.” The book continues to sell, and I continue to get questions from David’s fans. If I so much as mention him on Facebook—perhaps offering a toast to his memory on his birthday—people will message me with inquiries. I tried to answer some of the questions I got with a lengthy article that I wrote for this publication five years ago, “David Cassidy: Behind the Scenes.” But I still continue to get all sorts of questions. [more]

Transgression

July 20, 2025

As directed by Avra-Fox Lerner and written by Curtis Fox, the production has many problems, the first being its leisurely slow pace which makes the play seem longer and less dramatic than it is. Written in 19 scenes and taking place on the same Soho loft set throughout, the play is more of a teleplay than a stage play, minus the camera angles and the set changes. Each scene only reveals one new piece of information, a dramaturgically dull way to tell a stage story. In spite of all this, the play might have worked if the acting was passionate and intense but the cool, unemotional style undercuts much of the tension. [more]

Heathers the Musical

July 18, 2025

Andy Fickman’s polished production with its highly effective choreography by Gary Lloyd (additional choreography by Stephanie Klemons) is a Broadway-style production in a smaller house. If "Heathers the Musical" seemed too cynical in 2014 when it also played at New World Stages, time or events have caught up with it and it now seems a reflection of the life we live. With Broadway stars Lorna Courtney and Casey Likes leading the high-powered cast, "Heathers the Musical" should be a hit of the summer and beyond – and not just for teens and twenty-somethings who were in full evidence at the performance under review. [more]

Dilaria

July 14, 2025

How far would you go to be famous on social media? Julia Randall’s "Dilaria" is a stunning exposé of Gen Z 20-year olds, brought up on and addicted to TikTok and Instagram, who spend all their free time on their smart phones trolling the Internet. Making their Off Broadway debuts, rising stars Ella Stiller, Chiara Aurelia and Christopher Briney play very superficial college grads relocated to New York, but Randall gets a tremendous amount of satire from their interactions. The language is raw and sexy, not for senior citizens, but there is much humor in the way these twenty-somethings use words, particularly the latest urban slang. [more]

Open

July 14, 2025

"Open" is an award-winning love story by Crystal Skillman that uses magic as the emotional hook, taking an audience on a journey through the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of the challenges some people face in the pursuit of love in a socially and politically complicated world. In this case, two young women are drawn to each other by their love of the magical and mysterious. [more]

Out of Order

July 12, 2025

The idea presented in this prologue is that Holder, after 20 years in his theatrical life, has reached a dead end in his interest in playwriting. He is looking for something to re-energize himself, or he will give it all up and move on to something else. The prologue reader pulls a string, releasing a cascade of 36 folded cards from a box on the ceiling. The claim is that everything that is to transpire is real, and if Holder doesn't complete all of the tasks listed on the cards, he will quit the theater forever. [more]

Angry Alan

July 11, 2025

John Krasinski, best known for his role as the charming and amiable Jim Halpert on NBC’s sitcom The Office, is inspired casting for Penelope Skinner’s Angry Alan, a perfect showcase for his talents now the opening show at Studio Seaview, the renovated Tony Kiser Theater. In Skinner’s monologue co-created with actor Donald Sage Mackay who first played the part at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Krasinski is Roger, a three-years divorced man, who also lost his executive position job at AT&T and now works as the dairy manager at his local Kroger, a job he hates. Surfing the net, he finds a website called “Angry Alan” which seems to explain his midlife crisis: it is all the result of the “Gynocracy: a female dominated political regime which took over decades ago.” Roger who addresses us directly is still smarting from the fact that his live-in girlfriend Courtney has recently discovered feminism from a community college life class she is attending. [more]

Wesley

July 7, 2025

Austin Phillips’s puppet design deserves special mention. His owlet creation is imbued with uncanny charm—Wesley is clearly an owl, yes, but one whose subtle articulation suggests personality rather than anthropomorphism. The puppet becomes a living character, thanks in large part to the finely tuned performance of Daniel Sanchez, making an impressive Off-Broadway debut. As Wesley, Sanchez navigates a delicate balance: he gives the owl presence, agency, even affection, without sacrificing the essential strangeness of the animal. His portrayal renders the owl’s devotion to Casey moving and believable, even as we are always aware that this is a bird, not a human in disguise. As he dances with Casey during the “Winter is Coming” sequence we are painfully aware of how little time they can expect to share together. [more]

Machinal

July 5, 2025

"Machinal" makes use of all of these Expressionistic techniques. However, the current production has added tap dancing, practical foley and heightened movement created by choreographer Hilligoss in all of the scenes which both drowns out much of the dialogue and becomes very distracting. Obviously it is meant to emphasize the mechanical aspects of modern life but it also works as a sledge hammer repeatedly hitting the audience over the head with what is perfectly clear in the text itself. It is as though the director and choreographer do not trust the audience to get the message of the play. [more]

Lowcountry

July 4, 2025

"Lowcountry" by Abby Rosebrock, author of 'Blue Ridge" seen at Atlantic Theater Company in 2019, has a great deal going for it: a fine cast, a play told in real time, scenic design in keeping with the milieu and the plot, and characters quirky enough to keep us interested. However, this talky play doesn’t get where it is going until the last ten minutes and has a great many unanswered questions that perplex as one watches the play. While Jo Bonney’s production is strong on the characterizations, it is weak on pace so the plot seems to go on longer than it needs to and lacks tension until the very end. Ultimately, except for those last surprising minutes, the play eventually becomes tedious and in need of a few cuts – or new devices. [more]

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

July 4, 2025

A famous line from the John Ford film "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is spoken by the newspaper reporter character, Maxwell Scott, near the end of the film, after hearing the true story about the death of Liberty Valance. When asked if he will print the facts, Scott replies: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” These words do not appear in the original story by Dorothy M. Johnson nor the stage version by Jethro Compton. Still, they form the central theme of both. Compton’s play, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," directed by Thomas R. Gordon, is a beautifully realized revival of the 2022 production with most of the original cast. It is a classic story of the Old West presented by a solid ensemble. If you enjoy a good story, well-told, see this one. [more]

Mozart’s Don Giovanni: A Rock Opera

July 3, 2025

Ambition, that perilous double-edged sword, can elevate a work of art to soaring heights—or leave it flailing in the rafters, reaching desperately for resonance it cannot quite grasp. Such is the case with "Mozart’s Don Giovanni: A Rock Opera," Adam B. Levowitz’s audacious and heartfelt, if uneven, adaptation of Mozart’s canonical masterpiece. This leaner, louder take on "Don Giovanni," recognizing the latent synergy between operatic grandeur and rock bravado, now playing at The Cutting Room through August 26, replaces the classical orchestra with a ten-piece rock band and pares down the original three-hour-plus opera to a taut two hours and ten minutes. If only its dramatic momentum had received the same rigorous attention as its runtime. [more]

Pilobolus: Other Worlds Collection

July 1, 2025

What has happened to Pilobolus? Two programs, A and B, under the umbrella title “Other Worlds Collection,” made up the repertory during this visit to NYC. If Program A at The Joyce Theater is any indication, the troupe has become—yipes!—a dance company: no gimmicks, no mirrors; no feathers; no shadow play; no nudity; and, worst of all, no sense of humor. Program A was particularly lacking in the last-listed quality, four works that took gloom and mystery to new heights (depths?). [more]

Duke & Roya

June 30, 2025

'Duke & Roya" is an engrossing rom-com with a geo-political background, the sort of story that Hollywood specialized in during World War II. Charles Randolph-Wright’s new play makes use of the war in Afghanistan in 2017 before the American pull out in 2020. The cast is led by television stars Jay Ellis (James in "Insecure") and Stephanie Nur (Aalyiyah in "Lioness") who prove to be engaging company. The cast is filled out by veteran stage performers Dariush Kashani ("The Kite Runner," "The Band’s Visit," "Oslo") and Noma Dumezweni who created the part of Hermione in both the London and Broadway versions of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," winning the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress. [more]

Mike & Mindy’s Wild Weekend Jam

June 28, 2025

"Mike and Mindy’s Wild Weekend Jam," the musical returning Off Broadway in a bigger version than before, has a sophisticated score and unsophisticated book. The title is a bit of a misnomer as there is nothing “wild” about it and the “jam” part leads to unfilled expectations. However, the cast makes the most of the impressive musical portions of the show from Bucky Heard and Timothy D. Lee of the Righteous Brothers, salvaging Mark Corallo and Eileen Nelson’s book which resembles those Afterschool Specials of the past. [more]

Bear Grease

June 27, 2025

Already seen at 200 venues across North America, "Bear Grease," the all Indigenous musical, arrives in New York for a three-month residency. While its subtitle declares that it is a “reimagining of the musical Grease by Jim Jacobs and Warren Carey told through an Indigenous lens,” it is more of a variety show with songs, dances, and video while including iconc scenes and songs from "Grease" paying tribute to Native American culture. Written and created by LightningCloud (Crystle Lightning and Henry Cloud Andrade,) the exuberant cast made up of members of the Enoch Cree Nation, Beaver First Nation, Big Stone Cree Nation, Frog Lake, Muskeg Lake, Gift Lake, Mvskoke and Navajo Nation makes this an entertaining evening in the theater. [more]

Beau the Musical

June 26, 2025

"Beau The Musical" is not only absorbing as a story, the songs help to move the story along, something few musicals accomplish these days. The multi-talented cast is splendid, while the story hits on a great many hot button topics: bullying, intolerance, self-identity, single parenting, finding one’s identity. Best of all Beau The Musical is extremely satisfying, sending you out pleased by what you have seen. [more]

Breakin’ NYC

June 24, 2025

Each dancer contributes a unique personality and approach to the parade of styles, but when they all perform together it is as if they had been together forever. Each has a solo and a chance to speak about how they came to love hip-hop and how it changed their lives. Several impressed: Choung Woo Hyun has an elegance and lanky quality; Irina Brigita Laiciu’s bare midriff is as expressive as any ballerina’s toe-shoed feet; and Adrian T. Martin has a loose-limbed, easygoing quality. The other principal dancers are Jihad Ali, Messiah Brown, Kayla Muchotrigo, Rafaela Oliveira and Nicholas Porter, all displaying terrific individual qualities. [more]

A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First

June 24, 2025

"A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First" is a gem of a play written, directed, and performed by Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland. This two-hander makes a connection between a couple of Boy Scouts in the early 1960s and grunts in Vietnam at the end of the decade. While billed as an "absurdist" production, given the various definitions of "absurd," this show is anything but absurd. The words that come to mind are humorous, poignant, comedic, dramatic, provocative, and compelling. [more]

Passengers

June 22, 2025

Montréal’s physical theater troupe The 7 Fingers has made their third visit to New York with Passengers and the wait has been worth it. Using circus events, music, dance and monologues, "Passengers" follows nine travelers who perform as their train travels across the country. Like Cirque du Soleil, the varied acts are all unified by a theme, but The 7 Fingers is more intimate in scale and eschews clowns, giving the nine acrobats, gymnasts and circus artistes more and more daring acts to do. As the journey continues, the performances become more breathtaking and demonstrate the versatility of the cast. [more]

Prince Faggot

June 22, 2025

In a sharply observed and emotionally layered turn, "Prince Faggot" brings a fresh perspective to the classic "meet the parents" trope—with a royal twist. John McCrea’s George, the openly gay Prince of England, brings his boyfriend Dev (an excellent Mihir Kumar) home to meet his parents: the seemingly progressive Prince William (K. Todd Freeman, masterfully restrained) and Princess Kate (a poised and quietly complex Rachel Crowl). At first glance, the royal welcome is warm, even congenial. But beneath the polished surface lies a prickly nest of social expectation, national identity, and unacknowledged privilege. [more]

Manifest Destiny

June 22, 2025

Manuel Ortiz’s masterful play "Manifest Destiny" lays bare the complicity of the United States in the overthrow of the Chilean presidency of Salvador Allende and the authoritarian repression of Augusto Pinochet in an engaging, thoughtful and entertaining way. Ortiz’s direction seduces the audience into the darkness of political repression with humor and edgy, light-hearted banter, delivering an unforgettable statement on what happened in Chile and the U.S. organizations bearing responsibility for those events. It is a skillful blend of past, present, and perhaps future, and a show to be experienced by everyone who loves a compelling story solidly presented by an outstanding ensemble. [more]

Prosperous Fools

June 20, 2025

"Prosperous Fools" is like those 1960s and 70s East Village happenings where one never knew what was coming next. Taylor Mac’s tremendous imagination could use some reining in but his satire is pungent and on target. Like happenings, this is a show that must be experienced to feel the import of the event. And one admires Theatre for a New Audience for risking their funding to offer to stage it. Moliere would be pleased that his 18th century comedy gave rise to this 21st century free-for-all. [more]

At the Barricades

June 19, 2025

In great theater, history is not merely recounted but resurrected with breath and pulse, defiance and hope. In 'At the Barricades," the indomitable company What Will The Neighbors Say? breathes new life into one of the 20th century’s most harrowing yet heroic chapters — the Spanish Civil War of 1937. We find ourselves in Madrid not as tourists, but as comrades in struggle, embedded within a city and a country fraying at the seams, on the verge of succumbing to the iron fist of fascism. And yet, in the shadow of tyranny, a radiant flicker of international solidarity takes flame. [more]

Medea of the Laundromat

June 17, 2025

This is not merely a delightful evening of theatre—it is a defiant, sequined middle finger to theatrical complacency. The cast, many of whom trained under the maverick George Ferencz at La MaMa, bring authentic chops to the chaos. Morrison is transcendent, as raw as he is precise. Vath is a hurricane in scrubs (and let it be known she is the hardest working actress south of the TKTS line as she races from her curtain call at Theater Row Theater’s production of Cracked Open to aid and abet the sorceress on the cover of Child Abuse Monthly). Howard’s Jason is laughable, pitiable, and oddly endearing—a fallen hero undone by hubris and soap suds. [more]

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