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Off-Broadway

Marjorie Prime

December 16, 2015

Playwright Jordan Harrison is a graduate of the Brown University M.F.A. program and the recipient of several prestigious awards such as a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Kesselring Prize. On a technical level "Marjorie Prime" is expertly constructed and contains serviceable dialogue that propels the plot, but in totality it never rises above the level of an academic contrivance. The premise is a familiar but promising one, but in execution it is flat. The exposition and setup never really become emotionally involving and the closing revelations are consciously sensationalistic. [more]

Steve

December 14, 2015

Malcolm Gets, Jerry Dixon, Mario Cantone and Matt McGrath in as scene from “Steve” (Photo [more]

Our Friends the Enemy

December 14, 2015

Besides playing Boyce, Gwyther depicts other British soldiers as well as Germans. It is an exhilarating display of rapid vocal and physical transformations subtly giving each brief characterization a fleeting depth. With his angular features, intense eyes, expressive voice, and limber physicality, his performance is a superb display of riveting solo theater acting. [more]

A Wilder Christmas

December 13, 2015

The Peccadillo Theater Company’s "A Wilder Christmas" is a gentle and genteel evening of theater:  two early Thornton Wilder one-act plays, directed with an attention to detail and a leisurely sense of timing by Dan Wackerman, the company’s artistic director.  "The Long Christmas Dinner" (1931) and "Pullman Car Hiawatha" (1930) together make for a rich sampling of Wilder’s familiar themes of family and the unavoidable specter of death (which, in Wilder, is only the beginning of another journey).  These themes were perfected in his 1938 masterpiece, "Our Town," including the conceit of a godlike Greek chorus in the form of a Stage Manager who explains and even supervises the action. [more]

The Great Divorce

December 11, 2015

While C.S. Lewis’ famous theological allegory, "The Great Divorce," is written as a series of conversations, you might not expect that it would be suitable for stage dramatization as a religious treatise. However, the Michael McLean and Brian Watkins adaptation for Fellowship of the Performing Arts turns this into a high provocative and theatrical evening. Under the assured direction of Bill Castellino, three extremely talented actors (Christa Scott-Reed, Joel Rainwater, and Michael Frederic) play 19 characters among them, making them distinct and fully dimensional. The remarkable projections by Jeffrey Cady and the evocative original music and sound design by John Gromada make this a treat for the ear and eye as well as the mind. [more]

Pylade

December 10, 2015

Marko Mandič is an award-winning acclaimed classical actor from Slovenia who has worked several times with Mr. Buljan. His talent, charisma, and physicality justify that acclaim as witnessed here by his performance in the title role. Vocally expressive and emotionally volatile, he is truly naked through most of the play’s second half and unselfconsciously performs heroically even through the most awkward sequences. These include the incident with the watermelon and later painting his genitals black to match those of the actor playing Orestes who doesn’t display his. [more]

Quantum Joy

December 7, 2015

Victor Morales enters and introduces himself and notes that we are at Dixon Place. Mr. Morales who created this piece is stocky, bald, bespectacled, and possessed of a quirky everyman presence. For just under an hour, he delivers an amusing lecture with serious overtones enhanced by the illustrative projections. [more]

The Bellagio Fountain Has Been Known to Make Me Cry

December 5, 2015

Every member of this trio has experienced love and loss, and this show explores what it truly means to be human. Moments of drama exemplify the character’s toughest challenges, and their individual approaches to solving them. The strength of a woman as the leader of a household is brought to the surface, as these women have been let down by the men in their lives. The bond they share ultimately proves that true happiness can be found whether you achieve your personal goals and dreams or find something beautiful within yourself. [more]

Rose, The Kennedy Story as Told by the Woman Who Lived It All

December 4, 2015

The legendary stage actress Kathleen Chalfant is appearing in her second one-woman show, a follow-up to her “Mrs. Dalloway” in The Party, from the Virginia Woolf stories in 1993. This time she plays Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 79-year-old matriarch of the most famous political family in 20th century America. It is July 1969 and we meet her in the tasteful living room of her Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, home (designed by Anya Klepikov) one week after her youngest son Teddy’s tragic accident at Chappaquiddick. The premise of "Rose, The Kennedy Story as Told by the Woman Who Lived It All" is that we are members of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Knight of the Redeemer visiting from Dublin. We are invited to stay until Teddy comes back from sailing which he has been doing since the previous day. Her husband Joe, Sr., who has had a stroke eight years before is being cared for in an upstairs bedroom. [more]

H2O

December 2, 2015

Author Jane Martin has taken the familiar dramatic staple of a love story between two clashing opposites and rendered it compellingly here. There are plot twists, witty dialogue and violent incidents all with a tone-combining sweetness and melancholy. Jake is a depressive riddled with self-doubt and Deborah’s devoutness complicates her personal emotions. [more]

Nora

December 2, 2015

Pendleton has made some strange directorial choices. Characters appear on stage and stand silently long before their entrances. This is distracting as one wonders are they supposed to hear the conversations taking place. Many of the entrances and exits take place through the main aisle of the theater which breaks the fourth wall convention continually. He has also cast several actors as older than they are described so that this shifts the character relationships appreciably. The most famous scene in the play when Nora slams the door, possibly the most iconic moment in modern drama, is diluted considerably as there is no door for Nora to slam. Harry Feiner’s set design has the drawing room and bedroom visible side by side throughout the play which seems somewhat inappropriate for the 19th century setting. [more]

Night Is a Room

December 2, 2015

The pleasure of" Night Is a Room" is watching these three expert actors speak Wallace’s rich, insightful language which veers from wittily highfalutin to excitingly vulgar. Charting their emotional reactions which teem with hyperbolic outbursts, she has her finger on the pulse of these three self-deluders. Bill Rauch directed with total comprehension, walking a fine line between permitting the audience to observe the drama and also be mystified and appalled by these awful people. [more]

Dear Elizabeth

December 1, 2015

The great mid-20th century American poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell were friends from 1947 until his sudden death 30 years later. As they were usually in different cities and countries (Bishop lived in Brazil for many years while Lowell lived in New York City and Boston), they wrote each other over 450 letters which were published in 2008 as "Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell." Sarah Ruhl, an adventurous playwright whose plays tend to be very different from each other, has adapted the letters for the stage in a homage to writing and friendship called Dear Elizabeth in which all of the words are that of the poets. Kate Whorskey’s fascinating production for WP Theater (formerly The Women’s Project) has staged the play much in the manner of last year’s revival of A.R. Gurney’s "Love Letters" and also with revolving casts. [more]

Incident at Vichy

November 28, 2015

Arthur Miller is having a great posthumous 100th birthday! "A View from a Bridge" opened on Broadway to sensational reviews to be followed soon by "The Crucible." Now a revival of "Incident at Vichy," his frightening, microcosmic examination of Nazi-occupied France during the height of World War II, is enjoying a fine revival at the Signature Theatre. While the first two plays are each experiencing radical re-assessments, the director of Vichy, Michael Wilson has opted for a straight-forward, naturalistic interpretation in which each character exists as a finely etched portrait and the set (by Jeff Cowie) is a real, frightening place down to the period French newspapers plastering the holes in the windows. [more]

Alison’s House

November 26, 2015

Metropolitan Playhouse has done itself proud with its revival of the rarely seen "Alison’s House." Alex Roe’s splendid production with its accomplished cast demonstrates the vitality of Susan Glaspell’s play as well as its contemporary relevance. This is a revival of the highest caliber. [more]

Gluten!

November 25, 2015

From offstage we hear the hyperbolic exclamations of a young man, Copious Fairchild, as he masturbates mixed with the soundtrack of a television cooking show. He enters the living room with a jar containing his semen and places it on the coffee table. After favorably commenting on its magnitude his young wife Hibiscus Van Der Waal, takes it and goes offstage. We soon hear her orgasmic sounds as she inseminates herself during this anti-sexual reproductive process called “coagulating.” It’s a pivotal sequence in Stephen Kaliski’s excruciating futuristic spoof "Gluten!" [more]

Promising

November 24, 2015

Aside from the obvious theme of morality in politics, the play also deals devastatingly with issues of privacy in public life and in the information age. Can David keep the news of the abortion secret? How will the press deal with his Asian sister showing up? Which side are the pundits on the web on? Can the Carver campaign ride out the storm? The contemporary issue of date rape is also explored thoroughly. "Promising" ends with a sensational denouement which will leave the audience with much to think about. [more]

Kick

November 24, 2015

Ms. Rush is also the performer and she is stupendous. In addition to playing Bernadette, she portrays a gallery of characters she encounters. These include her parents, a priest, her gay male best friend, her Rockette confidante, her husband, her son and a few others. Rush effortlessly switches back and forth among these multiple roles with precision and vivid physical and vocal details, offering great depth to each. [more]

Dada Woof Papa Hot

November 20, 2015

It was inevitable that legalized gay marriage would lead to plays about gay parenthood. "Dada Woof Papa Hot," Peter Parnell’s sweet-natured, but frustratingly narrow-focused, new play at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater explores the kind of child rearing issues formerly supposedly experienced only by straight couples, at least straight couples with large bank accounts. To bring the theme of gay marriage further into the mainstream, divorce also rears its ugly head. [more]

Lost Girls

November 16, 2015

The title refers to three generations of women whose lives have been derailed by early pregnancies. When the play begins, we are in the modest home of embittered, single mom Maggie (Perabo) who is late for work at the Bloomingdale outlet during a nor’easter when she finds that her car has been stolen. When she also discovers that her daughter Erica hasn’t been to school that day, she realizes that her car hasn’t been stolen but taken by her daughter who it turns out has a boyfriend her mother knew nothing about. However, Maggie can’t afford to lose her job - or her mortgage - as her cushion this month is all of $23 and she is a “pizza an’ a six pack away from bouncing the electric bill.” This is life on the edge of subsistence for many Americans. [more]

Charles Francis Chan, Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery

November 16, 2015

The National Asian American Theater Company’s world premiere of Lloyd Suh’s "Charles Francis Chan, Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery" is best categorized as fiercely provocative satire. The play has two storylines. The first follows a 1960’s Frank who is developing and producing a murder mystery; the second being scenes from the aforementioned murder mystery, which is a stylized production featuring an Asian woman in white face as an elegant old debutant, and conversely an American Vietnam veteran in brown face as the Asian Detective Charles Chan, namesake to the production. [more]

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus Live!

November 16, 2015

Handled as stand-up comedy, Story tells us that he did not at first accept Dr. Gray’s theories until he heard one of his lectures, and then he became a convert to the concept that men and women’s thinking and feeling is so different that they might as well be from separate planets. Story uses his own life as an endless source of comic anecdotes to illustrate Gray’s ideas: his own courtship, marriage and life with his wife Megan. Basically, the theory boils down to men needing trust and approval while women need attention and understanding. Initially, Story’s mirthful tales are of how he caused unnecessary conflicts with his wife by not following these rules. Eventually, he learns the hard way through trial and error, and ultimately improves his life and marriage. [more]

Shear Madness

November 12, 2015

The energizing conceit of the play is its reliance on audience participation that adds considerably to the entertainment. During the action, the audience gets to ask questions of all those involved and at the intermission a detective is in the theater’s lobby to confer with. It all means that the actors besides sticking to the script must also improvise a great deal. This breaking of the “fourth wall” is done very cleverly and believably. The audience also votes on who the killer is based on all of the facts that have been presented. Therefore, each performance varies based on those in attendance. [more]

Hir

November 9, 2015

Ms. Nielsen has long been a treasured award-winning fixture of the New York stage with her quirky idiosyncratic comedic and dramatic talents. Here as the omnipotent matriarch Paige she is colossal. With her animated features, giddy voice, and frantic physicality, she delightfully mines every bit of the abundant dark comedy in the play. Alternately when slowing down to express fiercely serious sentiments she is chilling. This searing performance is yet another memorable turn from this incomparable actress. [more]

The Widow of Tom’s Hill

November 8, 2015

In Aleks Merilo’s play, "The Widow of Tom’s Hill," human nature is tested in the face of a life-threatening plague. Under Rachel Black Spaulding’s direction, this play takes place in a small town off the coast of Washington in 1918, with audiences first meeting a young widow named Aideen (Lucy Lavely) struggling to provide for her young child. She must fight for survival and take caution against anyone who crosses her path. From the beginning scene, audiences can surmise the rough past she’s encountered that’s forced her to become her own soldier against the cruel, harsh outside world. [more]

Professor Brenner

November 5, 2015

New Worlds Theatre Project’s mission is to present English language translations of Yiddish plays as comparable to their contemporaries Chekhov and Ibsen. Now they have turned to a first English translation by producing artistic director Ellen Perecman of David Pinski’s Yiddish classic, "Professor Brenner," which appears to have had no previous production. The reason may have been Pinski’s frankness about sexual relations and the controversial nature of the subject matter for the Yiddish–speaking community. [more]

Ripcord

November 3, 2015

Holland Taylor and Marylouise Burke in a scene from “Ripcord” (Photo credit: Joan Marcus) [more]

Perfect Arrangement

November 1, 2015

"Perfect Arrangement," Topher Payne’s first play to reach New York, is a well-crafted and engrossing play with much to say and has been magnificently staged in its Off Broadway debut. Don’t let the initial sit-com style fool you: this play has several serious messages at its heart about our personal freedoms and how repression starts at home. [more]

Veritas

October 31, 2015

Continuing the trend of producing challenging new works of theater in interactive environments, The Representatives are back with a riveting production of Stan Richardson’s "Veritas." Founded by Richardson along with Matt Steiner, the duo behind The Representatives chose to have their newest project performed at The Cave @ St. George’s, the ornately decorated basement chamber of the 300 year old St. George’s Church. [more]

Travels with My Aunt

October 27, 2015

Havergal’s adaptation is unusual in that it uses four male actors to play 25 roles including the central role of Aunt Augusta, with all the actors taking turns narrating the story. Dressed exactly alike in each act, Thomas Jay Ryan, Jay Russell, Daniel Jenkins and Rory Kulz switch identities, nationalities, age, and genders in a madcap adventure told with decided British understatement. This is challenging for the audience as well as the actors: since the performers do not change costumes, it is necessary to follow the plot closely to follow who is who, with the actors sometimes changing characters in the same scene. Steven C. Kemp’s minimal but clever unit set is not much help either as it remains basically the same in each act throughout all of the outrageous adventures that unlikely hero Henry Pulling is taken on by his aunt. [more]

Empanada Loca

October 27, 2015

Rubin-Vega dazzles from her first moments on stage. She is sassy and witty while sharing her life story in a raspy tone to match the mood, and maintains this intense connection with the audience the entire time. All eyes are on her as we comprehend her past and are in suspense as we see her present life unfold after learning the secrets of this empanada shop. They are unexpected and gruesome and will make the hair stand up on your head. The lighting design by Bradley King adds to the haunting atmosphere as there are moments when the light shines just right on Rubin-Vega and all you see is her face in the dark. [more]

Barbecue

October 25, 2015

Robert O’Hara’s "Barbecue" may seem like a series of sleights of hand, but as a satirist of American culture, the playwright has a good deal to say about how the media shapes and defines our culture by how it reports the evens of the day. Under the direction of Ken Gash, Barbecue will take your breath away at its invention and cleverness while holding up the mirror to our natures, exactly what theater is supposed to do. [more]

Romance Language

October 24, 2015

In Joe Godfrey’s new play, Romance Language, middle-aged Kay (Audrey Heffernan Meyer) is searching for joy again after experiencing a divorce and the death of her husband. Kay’s grown and smart-as-a-whip lawyer daughter Penny (Mairin Lee) is worried about her mother spending the rest of her life alone and insists that her mom find some kind of productive hobby or class to fill her time. With the help of her attractive and charming Italian tutor, Fiore (Jared Zirilli), Kay soon finds herself a lot less lonely. [more]

Cloud Nine

October 23, 2015

What is most remarkable about Caryl Churchill’s time traveling comedy "Cloud Nine" is that this prescient play about sexual politics and repression is now 36 years old, though it could have been written this year. Still a challenging gender-bending play, it asks us how far we think we have come from the Victorians in our attitudes about sex and identity. Set among the British in Africa during the repressed 1879 in Act I and back in England in liberated London in 1979 in Act II, the characters switch roles, genders and ages in the course of the evening. It isn’t obvious until the second half where the play is headed or how brilliant Churchill has been. Cloud Nine (which proves not to be a nirvana for the characters) challenges a great many of our strictly held beliefs about the way the world is or should be. [more]

Unseamly

October 20, 2015

Director Sarah C. Carlsen does an excellent job of utilizing minimalism to tell the story. "Unseamly" is told in a non-linear format, and relies heavily on flashbacks. Instead of having set pieces rolling in and out to change scenes, the play is presented in a bright white room which has secret doors and set pieces that pop out of the walls to change the environment and accommodate the next flashback. The set and costumes are both designed by Brian Dudkiewicz, and there is definitely a consistent style throughout. Minimalist with flashes of bright color, the clothing is sexy and trendy, and contributes to the overall theme of the play: costumed liberally, the whole production is steeped in sexuality. [more]

Sisters’ Follies: Between Two Worlds

October 20, 2015

With a cast led by downtown icons Joey Arias and Julie Atlas Muz, "Sisters’ Follies" includes life size puppets, flying ghosts, music and dance, topless performances, talking masks, and spectacular recreations of their most famous productions. When we first meet them, they are ghosts flying about the stage in long white diaphanous gowns glad to be back in their theater. They then sing a duet of Irving Berlin’s “Sisters” with appropriately new ribald lyrics. From their clever banter, we discover that Alice (Arias) was an actress and Irene (Muz) a dancer who were continually warring over everything from billing to which of them received more flowers to their legacies. Self-centered Alice, the older sister, is always cool and collected while Irene, who worships her even though she always seems to get the short end of the stick, is more passionate and temperamental. Today Irene is remembered as having founded the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while the acting school they both founded, The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, is also very much alive. [more]

Death of a Salesman in Yiddish

October 19, 2015

Although Arthur Miller grew up in a Jewish family, none of his characters with the exception of the antique dealer in The Price are explicitly Jewish. Yiddish stage star Joseph Buloff sought to correct that when he adapted "Death of a Salesman" as "Toyt fun a Seylsman" and presented the play in Argentina in 1949. In 1951, Miller permitted Buloff to bring the translation to Brooklyn’s Parkway Theatre where it was deemed a great success. Not seen again in New York until now, New Yiddish Rep is giving the Yiddish adaptation its Manhattan premiere in a slightly revised version in which the non-Jewish characters speak in English and the text is projected with English supertitles for a contemporary audience that does not know Yiddish. [more]

Rabbit Hole

October 19, 2015

With its realistic and detailed dialogue, Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s very well constructed script is a superior work of playwriting containing many humorous and moving dramatic exchanges. It is greatly realized by director Maria Riboli’s sensitive, accomplished, and subtle staging. That the racially diverse cast appears to be an actual family is a testament to her talents. [more]

Street Theater

October 19, 2015

The downstairs of the gay leather bar, The Eagle, has been configured into a runway-style performance space with rows of white folding chairs. This setup is for this giddy revival of the panoramic fantasia "Street Theater" by Doric Wilson. The play takes place on June 28, 1969, before, during and after the Stonewall riots on Christopher Street in Manhattan. [more]

Clever Little Lies

October 14, 2015

Before coming to the Westside Theatre, director David Saint helmed this production at the George Street Playhouse. No stranger to DiPietro’s style (he also premiered The Toxic Avenger at George Street), Saint does an excellent job of keeping the pace up when it matters most. The physical comedy is subtle and effective, but is over-the-top in just enough places to keep the laughter going continuously. Though one can hardly call the comedy of "Clever Little Lies" 'smart'—it is more vulgar than anything—Saint employs many different tactics to elicit laughs from his audience. [more]

Would You Still Love Me If …

October 14, 2015

Is it possible to love unconditionally? While we all say the words and make those promises, sometimes we may be faced with a condition that we never saw coming and may not be strong enough to accept. In John S. Anastasi’s "Would You Still Love Me If…," modern couple Dayna (Sofia Jean Gomez), a hard-working and ambitious lawyer, and Addison (Rebecca Brooksher), a beautiful and talented writer, seem to be well on their way to the perfect life as they are trying to adopt a child together and working to create the home of their dreams. [more]

Hard Love

October 12, 2015

The revelation of the play is Mr. Lerner’s detailed knowledge of both the orthodox sect and its place in modern Israeli society. He manages to make the age-old arguments of secular versus religious fresh and human scaled, not judging either of the characters, but observing them. [more]

Believers

October 11, 2015

Donna and Chris, the couple under the microscope in this play, are portrayed by two sets of actors: the first pair represents the lovers while they are still in college (where they first meet), and a second set of actors play the couple twenty years later—married and expecting their first child. The way these two stories intersect is through rotation, as alternating scenes flip between the two timelines until both stories come together at the climax. [more]

Half Moon Bay

October 11, 2015

Under Margarett Perry’s careful direction, Half Moon Bay, challenges an audience to try and decipher Richie’s infatuation with Alicia and what type of relationship he wants with her. Her mysterious ways question if she even wants his help at all or if his obsession clouds his otherwise logical judgment. Dumeng is the perfect mix of purity and puzzlement when she doesn’t even recall where she grew up or who her family is. The only concern she has is her baby who was taken away from her as she worked hard at part-time job after part-time job to make ends meet. The audience is left to ponder what her motives are and if there is any rationale to Richie’s decision to invest in her life. The do-gooder in him is admirable but the price he pays to help this woman is heartbreaking, causing the audience to feel sympathy as well as concern for his condition. [more]

Be That Guy (A Cat and Two Men) 

October 7, 2015

Heavyset and with a sullen countenance, Mr. Marinelli plays Trey by ably conveying the character’s melancholy and witty expressiveness. The charming John Carhart as Keith is animated and gives a fully realized characterization of the contemporary middle-class gay man navigating through New York City’s difficult milieu. [more]

The Awful Truth

October 5, 2015

If this story sounds familiar, it is the plot of the classic thirties screwball comedy "The Awful Truth" which starred Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. In fact, Arthur Richman’s 1922 play of the same name has been filmed four times including a 1925 silent version, a 1929 sound version with original stage star Ina Claire which has been lost, and a 1953 musical version with Jane Wyman and Ray Milland. As part of its 24th Season devoted to “Hope,” Metropolitan Playhouse is producing the first New York revival of this unpublished play, surprisingly as the original production ran a successful 144 performances. [more]

Reread Another

October 5, 2015

"Reread Another" is a collection of Stein’s sometimes illuminating, sometimes moving, and sometimes completely ridiculous linguistic portraits arranged into a series of discrete scenes. Spoken by three actors taking on various roles from sailors to shrubs, the text is an angular, twisting mix of paradoxes, circular logic, and contradictions that achieve satisfying moments of coherence when we least expect them to. Although the performance lacks any sort of cohesive story, it amounts to a shockingly moving evening, providing its viewer the unique sense that something indescribably interesting, perhaps even important, has occurred. [more]

The Quare Land

October 3, 2015

Mr. Maloney is a veteran character actor of stage and screen with New York City theater credits going back to 1964. This leading role of Hugh Pugh is a marvelous showcase for his immense talent. With a perfect accent, graceful physicality, and his grandly expressive face, deep set eyes, and prominent bald head he creates a riveting characterization out of Samuel Beckett. Visually and vocally he effortlessly combines humor, pathos and malevolence in this towering and memorable performance. [more]

The Pumpkin Pie Show: Labor Pains

September 30, 2015

The annual "The Pumpkin Pie Show" is back for its 17th year. Performed with no sets and no costumes, it has been described as “bedtime stories for adults.” Usually presented around Halloween (hence the pumpkin), this year the show has a run from September 24 to October 10. The reason is simply that creator, storyteller and writer Clay McLeod Chapman is about to become a father. The due date for his baby boy is October 31. As result Chapman’s scary and engrossing evening this year is called “Labor Pains” and includes five tales about babies from birth to childhood. Parenting has never been dissected so closely or seemed so chilling. [more]

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Pearl Theatre

September 29, 2015

If you thought Bedlam’s artistic director Eric Tucker had created physical productions for his acclaimed acting troupe in the past, think again. His "A Midsummer Night Dream," seen this summer at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival and now in residence at the Pearl Theatre, gives the actors a workout from beginning to end. Whether all audiences will go along with it – it is tiring for both performers and viewers – is a question, but like watching a world-class circus or ballet troupe, you know at the end of the evening that you have seen an extraordinary imagination at work. Tucker just expects everyone to go the extra mile. This is not a "Midsummer" for people who have never seen the play before, but one for whom the traditional interpretation no longer has anything to offer. [more]

The Gray Man

September 29, 2015

Mr. Farmer has crafted a suspenseful and gripping tale based on the reality of child abduction with mythical overtones. The dialogue is very fine and is evocative of the era. The intriguing script has been tremendously elevated by the superb production it has been given that is comparable to visiting a Halloween haunted house. [more]

The Legend of Georgia McBride

September 29, 2015

Lopez knows these characters and how they speak. He is helped immensely by his director Mike Donahue who allows just enough comic exaggeration without ever letting the show become a cartoon. Paul McGill’s hilarious choreography for the drag acts is right on target. Donyale Werle’s single set is wonderfully adaptable, changing from the grungy dressing room at Cleo’s to its stage to Casey and Jo’s apartment with just the shifting of a wardrobe rack and a couch. Anita Yavich’s costumes are a show in themselves, maybe a bit too posh for the Panama City venue but a hoot nonetheless. [more]

The New Morality

September 28, 2015

When American born Londoner Harold Chapin was killed in W.W. I in 1915, he was a highly regarded actor, stage manager and playwright, although not as famous as his colleagues George Bernard Shaw, James Barrie or John Galsworthy. While he had completed four full-length plays, his early death led to an eclipse of his work and his fame. In the centenary of his death, the Mint Theater Company well-known for uncovering lost works of merit, has revived his major comedy, "The New Morality." While Jonathan Bank’s production is elegant and polished, this diverting play unfortunately seems lightweight and thin today. [more]

Rough Draft

September 28, 2015

Performed at The Wild Project, a stylish downtown venue with a raked stage, the set (John Lavigne), lighting (Robert M. Stevenson) and sound design (Jorge I. Sanchez) all compliment the production and enhance the overall experience. Co-written by Wittrock, Donovan and Custer, and conceived and developed by the members of Improbable Stage, "Rough Draft" is a piece of theater which remains in its own category; a challenging, creative, and unique work presented by a group of talented artists with a message. [more]

Fulfillment

September 24, 2015

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

Radio Mystery 1949

September 24, 2015

Could Dennis Richard’s new play "Radio Mystery 1949" be inspired by the Mad Bomber George Metesky who terrorized New York in the 1940’s and 1950’s? Otherwise, there is no explanation for why this mild recreation of a radio mystery show which is beset by a mysterious actor who may or may not be carrying a bomb is set in 1949. Aside from no references to the post-war period, there are also some anachronisms like speaker phones which came from a later era. [more]

Hamlet in Bed

September 22, 2015

The play is told mainly in monologues by both actors on microphones, alternating with rehearsal scenes from the Gertrude/Hamlet confrontation. This makes the evening more of a performance piece than a stage play. Once we are given the facts, the ending becomes very predictable though the actors are very intense throughout the play’s 90 minutes. Except for the battered white mattress, Rachel Hauck’s set is entirely black, as are most of the costumes by Jessica Pabst. Sometimes due to Scott Zielinski’s lighting, the actors fade into the dark walls of the set. [more]

The Christians

September 22, 2015

"The Christians," Lucas Hnath’s examination of the intricacies of religion currently playing at Playwrights Horizons, comes to us at a unique cultural moment: every day, scientific advances further challenge the existence of God; ostensibly in an attempt to stay palatable to his mainstream constituents, The Pope has issued a series of proclamations regarding the acceptability of homosexuality, the truth of evolution, and other topics; "The Book of Mormon"—a patronizing, tongue-in-cheek assessment of the Church of the Latter Day Saints—is still playing to sold-out houses after five years on Broadway. Indeed, the fact that "The Christians"’ opening line, “Brothers and Sisters, let us pray,” was met with a hearty laugh is telling: today, New York audiences are largely secular and conditioned to sharpen their daggers at the very mention of Christ. To Hnath, however, the subject of religion is no joke. [more]

Death of the Persian Prince

September 22, 2015

Playwright Dewey Moss has crafted a well structured, taut, and seemingly conventional romance among clashing cultures that shockingly switches gears. Inventively based on news stories about situations in Iran, Mr. Moss skillfully weaves political issues into the dialogue among the characters and creates a plot that is gripping and painful. [more]
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