Elaine Wong Archives - TheaterScene.net

Elaine Wong

Lean-To

September 15, 2026

A multi-day hike is supposed to be restorative: an interval in which the civilized world recedes, the body remembers that it has muscles, and the mind, deprived of its usual electronic distractions, is given a chance to wander. But the woods have their own ideas about solitude. In Stephen Sheffer’s warm, funny, unexpectedly poignant "Lean-To," now playing at 59E59 Theaters, a rustic shelter becomes the unlikely site of a three-person collision involving loneliness, romance, race, vulnerability, betrayal and the peculiar intimacy that can arise when strangers are forced to share a roof. Directed with considerable sensitivity by Jesse Jou, the play gradually reveals itself as a small-scale comedy about the enormous difficulty of being alone with oneself—and the equally enormous difficulty of being alone with someone else. [more]

Everything Is Super Great

November 28, 2019

Stephen Brown’s "Everything Is Super Great" is a small, unpretentious play about an American family in crisis. That is not a novel theme, of course, but "Everything" rises gracefully to the occasion. Brown demonstrates his considerable skill for creating characters you can latch onto and root for. Director Sarah Norris—along with a gifted quartet of actors—has gently and thoughtfully taken Brown’s story up a notch, finding colors that may not have been evident on the page but that augment the script nicely. The resulting production is a lovely thing to behold. [more]

The American Tradition

January 31, 2019

There are many dimensions to Ray Yamanouchi’s "The American Tradition," directed by Axel Avin, Jr. for the New Light Theater Project. On one level, it’s an adventure story about a daring attempt to escape from American slavery. Eleanor (Sydney Cole Alexander) and Bill (Martin K. Lewis) are an enslaved married couple in the antebellum South. When they learn that he is about to be sold and separated from her, they seek a way to escape to the North. Eleanor proposes a wild scheme: A relatively light-skinned woman, she will disguise herself as Evander, a white male slaver. And Bill will pretend to be Evander’s slave and traveling companion. [more]