Articles by Christopher "Caz" Caswell

About Christopher "Caz" Caswell (73 Articles)

Christopher Caswell hails from Austin, Texas, but has called New York City his home for over three decades. Seasoned cabaret soloist, longest running member of the award-winning pops group "Uptown Express" and contributor to ManhattanDigest.com, he shares his view from the audience for TheaterScene.net. http://www.ChristopherCaswell.com

Contact: Website

Gwyneth Goes Skiing

October 21, 2025

This play (with occasional music by Golden Globe-nominated songwriter and composer Leland) spends most of its first half setting up the two main characters, embellishing on their personalities in and around other key people in their lives. Karp bursts onto the stage as Gwyneth, blowing up every mannerism and resulting in many laughs throughout the show. Karp’s comic timing is finely honed, as is his caricature of Paltrow. [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]

The Wash

June 7, 2025

Smith’s script, which is heartily laden with day-to-day chatter and feels slightly long, still finds perfect opportunities to divulge important messages about friendship, love, empowerment, loyalty, dignity, and perseverance. The play's conclusion is heartwarming, although there is a missed opportunity for rejoicing, when the ultimate success of the strike is written to occur between scenes. Director Awoye Timpo and dramaturg Arminda Thomas expertly weave the energy of the actors and their keenly intentional listening into a compelling tapestry. Though minimal, the opening choreography by Adesola Osakalumi and Jill M. Vallery is striking; this, and the few instances of singing spur the imagination with thoughts of what a great musical could be born from this material. [more]

We Do the Same Thing Every Week

May 11, 2025

Scenes progress, and it becomes clear that nothing which happens in Dick and Jane’s house makes a whole lot of sense, and that’s absolutely the point of Leverett’s witty, clever, and smart play. Giving a firm nod to the absurdist playwriting genre first popularized in the mid-1950s, "We Do the Same Thing Every Week" imparts the mindless, repetitive, and boring existence of humankind, which no amount of parlor games, huge vacuums (household or existential), duets, tap-dancing Things, or anthropomorphized cats and fish can overturn. [more]

Music City

November 17, 2024

By all outward appearances, the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew on West 86th Street is an unlikely location for a performance space, but deeply nestled into its 2nd floor can be found the West End Theatre, current home of the new country-western musical "Music City," featuring songs and lyrics by successful songwriter J.T. Harding. Harding’s songs have been sung by the likes of Kenny Chesney, Blake Shelton, Keith Urban and others, but they are a perfect fit for this small musical with a big heart. [more]

Little House on the Ferry: The Musical

November 3, 2024

The good news is that "Little House on the Ferry" is full of heart and brimming with laughs. Sook’s use of the space is commendable even if she struggles to wring a few ounces of earnestness out of the largely cartoonish characters. Michael McCrary’s choreography is simply awesome, and the music and songs are super fun. The actors are having such a great time that even some of the lesser jokes and moments of duller wit in the script are forgiven. “So far, so fun!” exclaimed my theater companion after the first number, and when a towering Galganni as Xana DuMe breaks out into a vigorous tap dance, it’s truly a fantastic moment that throws the audience into a delicious tizzy, present company included. [more]

People of the Book

October 14, 2024

“Lust, jealousy, and personal politics” are the punches promised by the publicity tag line for award-winning playwright Yussef El Guindi’s new play "People of the Book," currently on the boards at the intimately compact Urban Stages. The story centers around three high school friends, one of which has returned from the Middle East with a new bride and his newly written, soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture celebrated book. Themes of competition, morality, and judgment are all bandied about in this ambitious play. [more]

The Spirits’ Speakeasy

September 24, 2024

There is no program for the event nor a press script, which makes sense, since "The Spirits’ Speakeasy" is less theater and more experience. There are missed opportunities for the actors to move the attendees around so they experience more of what is going on in both rooms. My companion and I thoroughly enjoy catching up with each other, so much so that when Margery finally arrives in the lounge to give a few lackluster readings (based on the billets dropped into the box but presumably not seen by her, and half of the guests names she calls out do not answer anyway) we are unfazed. Finally, Houdini bursts into the room, challenges Margery’s authenticity by calling her a fraud, and insists she participate in a mysterious magic box trick, which was dramatic and fun. All told, although the activities of the evening are infrequent, we do not feel the evening is a disappointment at all. [more]

The World According to Micki Grant

June 9, 2024

Grant’s work is well-known to many, but this intimate, compact little revue featuring four actors, Matelyn Alicia, April Armstrong, Patrice Bell and Brian Davis, is an enjoyable, informative, and intimate love letter celebrating Grant anew. Although known for writing the 1959 single “Pink Shoe Laces” (sung by bobby sox darling Dodie Stevens), and the more visible musicals "Your Arms Too Short to Box with God" and "Cope," the evening’s offerings include many lesser-known works by Grant as well as unpublished songs, narratives, and poems, all demonstrating the broad, deep, and cutting edges of her humor, observation, and thought provocation in subjects running the gamut from love, war, rebellion, and justice. Days later, I’m still singing her two big songwriting numbers from the Stephen Schwartz musical "Working," “Cleanin’ Women” and “If I Could’ve Been” in my head. [more]

The Tiger’s Bride

February 21, 2024

Director/writer Suzanne Karpinski has made a valiant effort to corral the chaos by encouraging the audience to get a card stamped by the actors in the various spaces, presumably in the hopes they’ll avoid revisiting the same scene more than once, but the four floors of the building are quickly explored and there’s nothing new to discover after far too short a time. Sounds and dialog bleed across scenes in different areas separated only by curtains, splintering the audience’s attention. To the actors’ credit, they’re all having a marvelous time playing their parts; their enthusiasm is infectious, even if their acting often lacks the subtlety which the intimate playing spaces beg for. [more]

A Good Day to Me Not to You

November 18, 2023

As a work of writing, "A Good Day to Me Not to You" is blisteringly funny and seems deceptively shapeless, almost like a meandering evening of stand-up comedy, until it comes together to a fine point--that of the story of a woman who’s lost so much of herself she doesn’t know where to begin to find what’s left. Will she even be able to do so? Will Meecie leave the women’s shelter within the suggested year’s time, or will she remain until the end of her days, hoarding forks and fading into the canary yellow walls, another lost soul whose “RIP” is posted on the community corkboard in the dining hall? [more]

Emergence: Things Are Not As They Seem

October 28, 2023

Olson might very well be the three-way love child of Thomas Dolby, Bill Irwin, and Max Headroom. He carries the show with an unbridled, infectious, childlike enthusiasm, sharing what he knows and loves--science and music--using songs he wrote in his car and lyrics that support his storytelling. He puts on this show like a life-long project that he couldn’t wait to find the barn for. Olson reels us all in as he fills our minds with profundities in the same ease and flair he might have if he were telling us an evening of dad jokes. He shares postulates about time, space, color, light, thought, consciousness, love, and existence, in easy-to-grasp terms using purposeful words and with exquisite imagery. [more]

Bite Me

October 11, 2023

Both Garelik and Samuel’s performances as teens are fully formed and not stereotyped; their portrayals as young adults at their ten-year high school reunion are just as authentic. Direction by Rebecca Martínez is terrific, guiding both actors organically through their curiously intimate and emotionally climactic moments, at both stages of their characters’ young lives. Pipes has written an excellent play; she draws the disparate socio-economic and racial lines between Nathan and Melody with a fine pen. The arc and landscape of their friendship and its ultimate struggle is carefully wrought and effective. [more]

Doris Day: My Secret Love

September 17, 2023

Borelli as Doris Day is charming and appealing; her voice is not quite as strong as Day’s, but it is pretty and expressive, especially in quieter, more intimate moments. At the peak of some songs, where she’s expected to sing out fully and with passion, her voice doesn’t quite have the strength. [more]

Lightweight

August 1, 2023

Lightweight, the cleverly titled one-woman play currently being performed at the SoHo Playhouse, shines an important light on the subject of anorexia, and who better to tell her own story with this condition than the playwright herself, Amie Enriquez. Enriquez has taken her serious challenges with anorexia and put them into an engaging script. She, her character of “Amie,” a lone anorexic among drug addicts in a long stay rehabilitation center, regales the audience with stories of her behavioral obsessions about food, being watched through an open toilet stall to make sure she doesn’t throw up, powering up on laxatives and defecating in her clothes being some of them. She can so barely contain her excitement when Natalie, a bulimic, is admitted to the rehab, that Jayne, the head therapist (who “looks like a walking Barbie doll… how am I supposed to learn to love my body from a Bond Girl?”) insists she give up the talking stick to Natalie. [more]

Love + Science

June 8, 2023

As for the play itself, "Love + Science" tells a good story, even if not necessarily a new one. It’s largely another history of AIDS with a few scientific sprinkles thrown in. Where Glass’ script succeeds is in its characters and their determination. There are two especially poignant moments, conveyed by Melissa and Jane (both played by Williams), where they each confront Matt about how damaging his indecisiveness over owning his homosexuality is. And the scene where Jeff reproaches Matt for telling James that AIDS is 100% fatal is riveting. Lastly, it’s in the final scene where Glass’ play provides its most powerful message, when a now middle-aged Matt in 2021 compares the body count of AIDS to that of COVID-19, contrasting the swiftness with which the governments of the world produced a vaccine for COVID-19 where they have yet to create a vaccine for HIV, 40 years into the AIDS pandemic. [more]

Being Chaka

May 13, 2023

There’s no shortage of race-related storytelling in today’s theater and film arenas, and it takes a special entry to become seen among the offerings. "Being Chaka" is one such play; thoughtful, sensitive, and earnest, it weaves an exploration of racism throughout its distinct and intriguing characters, with compassion and without a heavy hand. [more]

God of Carnage

April 28, 2023

The direction by Nicholas Viselli ultimately misses a key point in this plot, which is that Alan and Annette should be staged as perpetually trying to leave Veronica and Michael’s apartment. These two couples are strangers to each other; they are not friends or even acquaintances. Yet the staging plunks the four of them together with too much familiarity and intimacy. Their situation does not call for them to remain in each other’s company for so long, or for backrubs to be exchanged, etc.; it’s just not believable. The entire premise of the plot is made implausible by blocking and acting choices that should have been redirected. [more]

Muse

April 21, 2023

Tangredi’s script has some lines that could stand revisiting, but even in its lack of polish it does have good dramatic bones. Unfortunately, "Muse" fails utterly on delivery. Although the direction by Hazen Cuyler demonstrates some inventive staging in scenes which take place simultaneously in different times, it completely misses the mark by not insisting the actors listen to each other in earnest and find their dialogue organically. Thus, the acting is unilaterally unbelievable; the performances are stiff and filled with maudlin, melodramatic mugging and grandstanding. [more]

*mark (A solo performance of the Gospel of Mark)

April 17, 2023

Fortunately for us, “Magisian” Drance is quite the storyteller. Under the reasonably succinct direction of Jackie Lucid, he spryly moves around the space, emphasizing parables with chalk drawings and applying subtle changes to his inflection, body language, and eye contact to make the various characters distinct. Intense and playful, somber and jubilant, he makes this story engaging yet simple, without the help of costumes, scores, and songs which allow shows like "Godspell" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" to thrive in the contemporary theater canon. The Magis Theater Company endeavors to share this gospel as it might have been done in older times, from start to finish and on the backs of its storytellers alone. [more]

The Trees

March 7, 2023

Borinsky’s dialogue is filled with colorful, quirky lines which are often funny and entertaining, but the entire script borders on absurdity without a cohesive through point. There are a handful of lines which carry a promise of meaning, but most are tossed into the air like tweets, missing connections and lacking purpose. There’s a passage inspired from Deuteronomy 20:19, which, if it’s supposed to be the inspiration for the plot, stands alone as one of the few sage moments in the story. [more]

Conversations After Sex

February 28, 2023

Setting aside societal shame and judgment, anonymous sexual encounters have their benefits. If the chemistry works, then there’s the immediate gratification in the form of pleasure. If the connection isn’t perfect, then deciding to make a quick exit (either before or after the experience) can be awkward, as well as deciding whether a “repeat” is in order. A bigger question which might come to mind is why does a person choose an anonymous “quickie” over getting to know someone first? Are they looking for validation, or avoiding fears of loneliness, commitment, or rejection? Are they wearing anonymity like armor? Such thoughts come to mind as Mark O’Halloran’s swift and engaging play “Conversations After Sex” unfolds, a collection of scenes in which the unnamed character of “She” (played by Kate Stanley Brennan) engages in post-coital dialogues with several different men she has met on-line, in bars or in passing (all portrayed by Fionn Ó Loingsigh). [more]

Downstate

November 16, 2022

Norris’ smart and effective script is packed with controversy; its characters are stained by the trauma in which their lives have been steeped, and it’s uncertain they will ever feel clean again. So many questions come to mind as this play unfolds. ... "Downstate" is a stirring, thought-provoking play about a deeply painful topic that plagues societies around the world. It’s an extremely tight piece of writing; every word and action is relevant. I can’t wait to see it again. [more]

Burbank: Walt Disney in Crisis

September 11, 2022

Although "Burbank: Walt Disney in Crisis" occasionally has its actors delivering monologues out to the audience, the most compelling drama occurs from the interactive scenes between the actors themselves; more of this would have absolutely been welcome. Nevertheless, the play does entertain and inform, revealing the financial struggles Disney went through to make such iconic films as "Pinocchio," "Fantasia," and "Bambi," even in the wake of "Snow White"’s success. Bossert also managed to squeeze in the fact that Disney attempted to block Adriana Caselotti, the voice of Snow White, from getting other work, in order to not “spoil the illusion” of the character. [more]

The Near Disaster of Jasper & Casper

August 30, 2022

As a piece of writing, "The Near Disaster of Jasper & Casper" is whacky and creative, and except for a couple of out-of-place bits of humor, one involving a middle finger and another a candle called “Blow Me,” it is charmingly humorous. The story even becomes lightly touching when Jasper’s love for his brother Casper is tested, and Jasper learns the real meaning of family and what it is to be responsible for others besides himself. "The Near Disaster of Jasper & Casper" is a thoroughly enjoyable, quirky fairy tale told by an expert storyteller, Jason Woods. By the end of this foray into the woods, it was time to go, I hated to leave, I had to, though. Worth a second viewing. [more]

Mister Miss America

July 16, 2022

D'Astolfo (that’s duh-STAHL-fo, mkay?), who also wrote the piece, sends Taylor off like a firecracker from the moment he comes onto the stage, speeding through Taylor’s wry and witty dialect so fast, why Mother of Jefferson Davis, he’s passing the fox! D’Astolfo’s dialogue is chock full of delightful West Virginian-isms, gay and regional. Taylor is described in the script as “wide-eyed and winning,” and this definitely describes D'Astolfo in the role. He also adds to the play’s humor in a totally different capacity as the voice of the wry, off-stage announcer and master of ceremonies. [more]

Queen

June 19, 2022

Shekar’s script is extremely smart, funny at just the right moments, and morally gripping. Her characterizations of Ariel and Sanam are fully formed, uniquely individual and carefully complementary: Ariel is a crunchy-granola, bee-loving, single mom who’s desperate to prove Monsanto’s guilt, and Sanam is intense, strong-minded and honest to a fault. Through the character of Arvind, Shekar introduces the notion to Sanam that she and Ariel are looking at their study through the impartial lens of confirmation bias. The character of Dr. Hayes adds just the right amount of antagonism, almost sinister. Although there’s lots of statistics jargon in the script, it never impedes the progress of the story, thanks to the actors and director Aneesha Kudtarkar, who skillfully shapes the piece, finely intertwining the performances to maximum impact. [more]

Our Brother’s Son

May 6, 2022

Freshman playwright Charles Gluck, a retired gastroenterologist who has finally followed his dream to write a play, has turned out one terrific piece of theater. There is virtually no superfluous dialogue in this script; almost every line serves a specific purpose, whether it’s to provide key exposition, continue to build the play’s fully three-dimensional characters or to accelerate and intensify the dramatic through point. [more]

Wish You Were Here

May 4, 2022

In the 13 years that span this earnest, thought-provoking play, three weddings, fear, war, and death all serve to test the strength and sanctity of these women’s bonds. Toossi’s script is intimate, and searching, both funny and heartbreaking; "Wish You Were Here" is a beautiful testament to the strengths and allegiances women find with each other in times of turmoil and oppression. [more]

Bloom

April 26, 2022

Direction by Victoria Pérez could have better negotiated the script transitions and emotional shaping of the piece; however, script, director and actors, as well as lighting design by Miguel Valderrama and sound design by Michael Hernandez all come together to create a moving ending which comes with no answers but does provide a sense of closure. "Bloom" hasn’t fully flowered in this incarnation, but perhaps more will be revealed in future productions. [more]

Songs About Trains

April 16, 2022

As a piece of theater, "Songs About Trains" is earnest and unique. Lead author (and performer) Beto O’Byrne, along with contributing authors Eugenie Chan, Reginald Edmund, Jay B Muskett and Rebecca Martínez (who also co-directs) have constructed a work that’s not definitely a musical and not quite a play, but more of a performance piece which sews stories together with music, dance and songs. [more]

The Patsy

April 12, 2022

Greenspan, a six-time Obie Award winner, whirls at breakneck speed through this three-act play in just over an hour, transforming from one character to the next with expert fluidity. He transitions between the highly dramatic and entitled Grace, the histrionic and prideful Mrs. Harrington, the simple but lovable Mr. Harrington, the gentle and sweet Patricia, and the gangly, dopey gentleman callers Tom Anderson and Billy Caldwell, drawing on every gender-bending limb, muscle, hand, voice, look or facial gesture he can muster. Even the brusque Tip Busty and party girl Sadie Buchanan get their own unique treatment. [more]

Tiananmen Requiem

March 18, 2022

The play itself is suitably dramatic and thought-provoking; as a piece of theater it should continue to be presented to enlighten future audiences. This particular production isn’t quite up to the task of delivering the play to maximum impact. [more]

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