Stephen Brown-Fried Archives - TheaterScene.net

Stephen Brown-Fried

The Unfinished Conversation: Shaw in 2025

November 19, 2025

George Bernard Shaw — A salon-style evening at the American Irish Historical Society brought artists and educators together as David Staller led a candid, contemporary look at Shaw’s ideas in 2025. [more]

Cymbeline

January 31, 2025

The modern verse translation reasonably maintains a semblance of the Elizabethan iambic pentameter form supported by the ensemble's solid delivery of the lines. People familiar with Elizabethan dramatic poetry may be put off by the change in the wording but not necessarily by the presentation of the text. Overall, it is an enjoyable show worth spending time on whether or not one is an admirer of Elizabethan drama done to a modern beat. [more]

Naked Brazilian (The New York International Fringe Festival 2016)

August 15, 2016

Writer Gustavo Pace is the handsome, youthful and animated performer of this autobiographical exploration. He loudly rattles on in Portuguese and English while adequately portraying himself and several characters. These include his father, brother, a female therapist working on turning him straight, and various others he encounters. It’s an amiable and passable performance that’s heavy on volume and shaky on intelligibility. [more]

Awake and Sing!

July 16, 2015

"Awake and Sing!" seems at first an odd choice for NAATCO, the acting company dedicated to the advancement of Asian actors, but after an initial wary uneasiness, the cast, under the direction of Stephen Brown-Fried, soon takes command of Odets’ dated language, a mixture of poetic metaphor and heightened colloquialisms which was difficult to speak even in the 1930’s. [more]