The Lucky Ones
A moving, funny meditation on mortality and friendship, Lia Romeo’s “The Lucky Ones” opens not with sentimentality but with shock — and ends with a grace note of acceptance that feels wholly earned. [more]
Off-Broadway
Playing Shylock
Mark Leiren-Young’s timely one-man show, "Playing Shylock" (formerly called simply "Shylock"), has arrived in New York after its premiere run in Toronto in its new version rewritten around the life and career of veteran film actor Saul Rubinek ("The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," "Unforgiven," "Frasier") playing himself. Returning to the stage for the first time since 1990, Rubinek plays an actor performing Shylock in a (fictional) production of Shakespeare’s "The Merchant of Venice" which is shut down by protestors claiming that the play is anti-Semitic and the theater company has caved in to their demands. While the play is fascinating and provocative, it also has some flawed passages but Rubinek is commanding at all times. [more]
Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?)
To have emerged from a childhood like Zoë Kim’s—with enough self-awareness, critical distance, and sheer emotional stamina to craft a piece of theater with even a hint of uplift—is in itself an act of tremendous courage. The piece’s very existence is a quiet triumph: a testament to survival, to the insistence of choosing a path of identity in the face of sheer cruelty, and to the reclamation of one’s own narrative. Yet "Did You Eat?" accomplishes something beyond testimony. Artistically, it is a layered, deeply felt work that reveals Kim’s aesthetic intelligence and her willingness to experiment with form, language, and the body. [more]
Art of Leaving
While Broadway was once filled with plays like this a generation or two ago, "Art of Leaving" now seems very dated. It would have been more believable set back in an earlier decade. Matt Gehring’s direction emphasizes the sit-com nature of the play which is a mistake as it makes the proceedings seem all that much more shallow. Both Aaron and Diana are very thinly written so we learn little about their 25 year marriage except that Diana has lived her life to please her unhappy and demanding husband. Jordan Lage’s Aaron is a total egoist who is lacking in sympathy, while Audrey Heffernan Meyer’s Diana seems unbelievably naïve as to what is available to women today. [more]
Let’s Love!
The fourth evening of one-act plays by Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director Ethan Coen is coyly called "Let’s Love!," when by rights it should be called "Let’s Have Sex!" In three one-acts, all on the same theme, couples are looking for love in all the wrong places - or all the wrong ways. Neil Pepe, artistic director of Atlantic Theater Company smoothly directs the high-powered cast led by Aubrey Plaza, Nellie McKay and Mary McCann as he has done the previous three Coen evenings ("Almost an Evening," "Offices," and "Happy Hour.") What is unusual about "Let’s Love!" is that the language is continually raunchy and the foul-mouthed women have all the best lines, though not the most completely written characters. [more]
Heaux Church
In "Heaux Church," writer-performer Brandon Kyle Goodman does not so much deliver a sermon as they detonate one—turning the pious pulpit upside down and shaking loose its centuries of shame, repression, and whispered taboo. What emerges from the rubble is something gloriously unholy and defiantly sacred: a new gospel of pleasure, pride, and personal liberation. Directed with ecstatic precision by Lisa Owaki Bierman, and buoyed by the ecstatic ministrations of DJ Ari Grooves, enveloping sound design of Christopher Darbassie, and flirty adult puppets of visual provocateur Greg Corbino, Goodman presides over a theatrical communion that is part revival, part stand-up confession, and part drag-tinged spiritual exorcism. [more]
Not Ready for Prime Time
Sketches are performed, in this case approximations of the originals, which is understandable (the authors Erik J. Rodriguez and Charles A. Sothers didn't have the rights to use the actual SNL material) but also a little odd for the more famous bits. It mostly doesn't matter though, and only hardcore fans will notice the difference. The women feel slighted, which makes sense if you watched the show in the 70s (and the 80s). [more]
Truman vs. Israel
Although William Spatz’s "Truman vs. Israel" depicts a fictional encounter between former President Truman and lawyer and later first Jewish woman congresswoman Bella Abzug in 1953, the play brings to life these two colorful and flamboyant personalities who are not so much known today as they once were. As directed by Randy White, the real problem with the play is that in reviewing Truman’s career leading up to the accusation of anti-Semitism, it rehashes a great deal of political history which will be unfamiliar to most theatergoers. One almost needs a score card to follow the ins and outs of Truman’s controversial career. The play also cuts between 1988 and 1953 making it confusing as to what is happening when. [more]
oh, Honey
Under Carsen Joenk’s clean, clever direction, Scotti’s writing finds a delicate equilibrium — biting, funny, and deeply humane. The quartet of women are precisely dressed by designer Iliana Paris — Lu (played with steely authority and a glint of battle-worn wisdom by Dee Pelletier), Bianca (played as a confection — all sugar, charm, and the gentle fizz of conviviality — yet beneath that polished surface something acrid brews, by Jamie Ragusa), Vicki (Karo, radiating a pitch-perfect, Aquarius-inflected, “healing crystal” chaos), and Sarah (Mara Stephens) — are not friends, as Lu icily reminds us. “We can’t talk to real friends about this crap,” she declares. “They already talk enough shit about us behind our backs.” This crap, we soon learn, is the devastating, unshareable truth they orbit: each has a son accused of sexual assault. [more]
Crooked Cross
Samuel Adams as Moritz Weissmann and Ella Stevens as Lexa Kluger in a scene from the Mint Theater [more]
The Pitch
There’s no denying that when 'The Pitch" stays in the office, it’s alive—taut, funny, and honest. Alper clearly knows this world; he writes its jargon and swagger with precision. But each time the play strays from the phones and the whiteboard, it forgets its own best pitch. As a showcase for a terrific ensemble and Keller’s crisp direction, it’s worth the listen. Yet, like a salesman who can’t stop talking after he’s closed the deal, The Pitch doesn’t know when to hang up. When it stays on the phone, it’s riveting; when it hangs up, we’re stuck on hold. [more]
Gwyneth Goes Skiing
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]
Oratorio for Living Things
To describe "Oratorio" is to flirt with the inadequacy of language. It is a musical work—a sung-through piece in the formal lineage of the oratorio, that 17th-century form that eschews staging and dialogue in favor of spiritual rumination through voice. Think Handel’s "Messiah," and then think again—"Oratorio for Living Things" shares the same bones, but not the flesh. Christian, ever the aural alchemist, reclaims and “rewilds” the form, unbinding it from its ecclesiastical constraints and infusing it with a heady blend of the sacred, the scientific, and the speculative. [more]
Awake and Sing!
The play is about a Jewish family, the Bergers, who live together in a small apartment in the Bronx. The Sea Dog production features color blind casting, so almost every Berger is a different race or ethnicity. This could be jarring but as the play settles in it becomes a non-issue. It's the play's 90th anniversary but many of the themes feel contemporary. [more]
The Other Americans
Comedian and actor John Leguizamo’s "The Other Americans," his first full-length and full-cast play, aside from his satiric one-person shows, is making its Off Broadway debut and proves to be an impressive dysfunctional family drama. Following in the tradition of Arthur Miller’s "All My Sons" and "Death of a Salesman," Lorraine Hansberry’s "A Raisin in the Sun" and August Wilson’s "Fences," as well as Eugene O’Neill’s "Long Day’s Journey into Night," the play focuses both on its 59-year-old Colombian American protagonist Nelson Castro and his estranged son Nick, and his pursuing the American Dream in all the wrong ways. While this New York play is both generic and derivative, its authentic Latino milieu makes it particularly notable as it is difficult to name any other play that fulfills this role. [more]
Unstuck
Olivia Levine’s "Unstuck" begins like a comedy set and ends like a cleansing. She steps into the light holding a fake candle and an orange, instantly setting the tone: part ritual, part bit. “I hope my parents are always happy and that they live forever — of course they will, but just in case,” she intones, before muttering “Done done done done done GUN — goddammit.” It’s funny, until it isn’t. You laugh, then realize you’re inside the mechanics of OCD — the panic disguised as precision, the desperate repetition hiding inside a joke. [more]
Nothing Can Take You from the Hand of God
Jen Tullock in the one-woman play “Nothing Can Take You from the Hand of God” at Playwrights [more]
Italian American Reconciliation
"Italian American Reconciliation" may not be peak Shanley, but in the capable hands of this cast and creative team, it becomes something rare: a flawed but full-hearted theatrical reverie, equal parts barroom confessional and back-alley sonnet. It may be second-tier Shanley, but even Shanley’s second tier can outshine the top shelf of lesser playwrights. [more]
Are the Bennett Girls Ok?
The style and tone of "re the Bennet Girls Ok?" has been updated to contemporary language with the women using “like” and multiple curse words including the F-bomb so that although we see women dressed in Mariah Anzaldo Hale’s clothing from 1811 what we hear is 2025 language. And while the jokes suggest this is now a farce, none of it is very funny, with the men getting the worst of it. Both Charles Bingley (nicknamed "Bing Bong" by the Bennet sisters) and Fitzwilliam Darcy are figures of fun so that we do not see what the women see in them. While the original novel was a social comedy, the serious problem that the Bennet women must marry as they will be evicted from their house on the death of their father is no longer a consideration today: entailment to the oldest male heir was discontinued in England in 1925. Also unlike in 1811, women can now work and earn their own money. [more]
The Least Problematic Woman in the World
Under the weight of the show's ambition, Dylan Mulvaney is a star. Not in the manufactured influencer sense, but in the time-honored theatrical tradition of the charismatic truth-teller who can command a stage with little more than timing, talent, and tenacity. She invites us to laugh with her, cry with her, rage with her—and then, perhaps, go out into the world a little more willing to see the humanity in people who are simply just trying to “be.” "The Least Problematic Woman in the World" is not without flaws—but like its creator, it dares to be seen in all its contradictions. And that is the most radical act of all. [more]
And Then We Were No More
As a playwright Tim Blake Nelson has always been interested in moral and ethical problems in such play as "The Grey Zone," "Eye of God" and "Socrates." His latest play "And Then We Were No More" now at La MaMa E.T.C. is also about such knotty questions but this one is set in the near future. A dystopian drama, "And Then We Were No More" investigates a justice system no longer interested in mercy but in an algorithm which makes all decisions. Mark Wing-Davey’s production featuring acclaimed actress Elizabeth Marvel is glacially cool in the manner of sci-fi movies that have something serious on their mind. The play has some resonance for the times we are living through now. [more]
Slaughter City
It has taken nearly three decades, but Naomi Wallace’s feverish proletarian dreamscape "Slaughter City" has finally carved its way onto a New York stage—and in doing so, has made a queasily persuasive case for its own urgency. First mounted by the Royal Shakespeare Company (January 1996) and the American Repertory Theatre (March 1996), this bruising, bloodstained fable—set in a slaughterhouse where class war, labor unrest, and the surreal intermingle like steam off a fresh carcass—feels, depressingly, like prophecy fulfilled. In the years since its debut, the power of organized labor has withered in many corners of American life. But Wallace’s dramaturgy doesn’t so much wither as wound: the play’s beating heart remains the same—pulsing with the traumas of exploitation, the rot of institutional racism, and the inextinguishable ache of the working class for dignity, love, and survival. That "Slaughter City" now arrives in New York under the direction of Reuven Glezer, via Alex Winter and Small Boat Productions, feels not belated but inevitable. And its resonance today, in our era of “essential” workers and renewed labor militancy, is uncanny. [more]
The Glitch
Though it ends on a note of ambiguity—as any good speculative work should—'The Glitch" is resoundingly clear in its testament to the power of theater to interrogate our technological anxieties with grace, wit, and emotional intelligence. In this age of rapid AI proliferation, Koenig’s play reminds us that while machines may evolve by version number, human hearts upgrade by reckoning—and not always successfully. [more]
(un)conditional
Although the advance press materials suggest that Ali Keller’s "(un)conditional," the 2024 Lighthouse Series winner at SoHo Playhouse, is about wife swapping, it is, in fact, about two couples with different sexual problems that eventually become one story when it transpires that two of the people know each other from work. Director Ivey Lowe has used a suitably light touch to deal with this delicate and sensitive subject matter. While the play is never erotic, it may be the most intimate play you have ever seen so far. The actors playing the two couples are excellent at handling this tricky theme, one that cries out to be addressed more often even though it may make some uncomfortable. [more]
From Trinity to Trinity
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
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
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]
Blood Orange
"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
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
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]
Relative Stranger
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
"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
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
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
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
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
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]
The Life and Death of King John
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)
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
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
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
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]
Sulfur Bottom
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
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]
well, i’ll let you go
"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
"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
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
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]
Transgression
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]
Dilaria
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
"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
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
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]
Machinal
"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
"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
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]
Duke & Roya
'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]
A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First
"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]
Prince Faggot
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]