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Plays

Muses

May 14, 2023

However, both every scene as written by Maldonado and directed by Theatre East’s artistic director Judson Jones is staged as though it were the climax. It is one thing to enact a play up to the hilt. Here there is no arc or build up. Every scene begins at the top and leaves the actors with nowhere to go. Although performed by a tight quartet of actors, as written the characters are two dimensional, telling us no back story and little about them. [more]

shadow/land

May 14, 2023

"shadow/land" by Erika Dickerson-Despenza is a play about the August 2005 disaster, Hurricane Katrina. It is the first episode of a ten-part magnum opus. "shadow/land," though, is more than a play.  It is a painfully rich vision of what hundreds and hundreds of stranded rooftop denizens, so touted in the media, must have gone through behind the waterlogged walls of New Orleans.  It is the rare theatrical work that recreates the agony and frustration of a natural disaster that transcends the fourth wall, seemingly without artifice, so involving is the entire endeavor. [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]

Robin & Me: My Little Spark of Madness

May 11, 2023

Under the direction of Chad Austin, Droxler uncannily becomes not only Williams (and all of Williams cinematic characters who each serve up different helpful advice), but also his father Ed; mother Mary; and other characters, all, of course, just facets of his own persona.  He even conjures the comic actor Jim Carrey who, for a short time replaces Robin Williams as an ad hoc advisor.  Even Jack Nicholson makes a guest appearance. [more]

Good Night, Oscar

May 9, 2023

Sean Hayes, up till now best known for his Emmy Award-winning performance as Jack McFarland on "Will and Grace," gives a titanic performance as humorist, raconteur and pianist Oscar Levant once called the wittiest man in America, in Doug Wright’s new play "Good Night, Oscar." Although Levant is not much remembered today, you can enjoy this character study and depiction of early late night television even if you have never heard of him before. While "Will and Grace" has made evident Hayes’ way with one-liners, "Good Night, Oscar" demonstrates that Hayes is able to dig deep in a character portrayal as well. Credit must go to director Lisa Peterson for inspiring this memorable performance. [more]

Hong Kong Mississippi

May 5, 2023

From the moment he walks out with a stuffed “Disneyfied” dragon to tell us a fairy tale his mother told him when he was little, we are enraptured by Pinky, an 11-year-old Chinese boy growing up in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Written and performed by Wesley Du, "Hong Kong Mississippi" is a coming-of-age tale that speaks innocently, yet often in frank terms, of racism. And providing the real dose of irony, the only other character to experience a seismic shift in the play is the man who resents Pinky the most, a man who against his better judgment unknowingly becomes Pinky’s mentor and father figure he never had. [more]

Summer, 1976

May 5, 2023

Auburn (Pulitzer Prize winner for Proof) has a knack for writing complex female characters.  That knack hasn’t failed him in "Summer, 1976."  Diane, the lustrous Laura Linney, is an aloof artist/university professor who meets Alice, the warm and magnetic Jessica Hecht, a stay-at-home mom, via their very young daughters.  Alice’s husband, the unseen, but occasionally heard, Doug, an economist on the tenure track at the university where Diane also teaches, devised a babysitting co-op that involved coupons exchanged for hours of babysitting, a system that eventually breaks down quite humorously. [more]

The Knight of the Burning Pestle

May 3, 2023

Directors Noah Brody and Emily Young, both of the Fiasco Theater, have neatly trimmed the dialogue and some of the minor characters so that the play comes in at two hours and 15 minutes. However, they have made some choices that work much less well. Except for a rolling doorway to designate Merrythought’s home, Christopher Swader & Justin Swader’s scenic design does not differentiate one scene from another due to its lack of design elements. Other than the musical interludes, the productions lacks atmosphere in all its scenes. They have also used doubling and tripling to the point where it is difficult to keep straight who most of the actors are when they appear on stage in this play that has probably never been seen by most members of the audience. Most distracting is actress Royer Bockus playing three male roles – Merrythough’s son Michael, Little George, and a Servant as well as a horse named George. The role of Venturewell has had a change of gender but as Tina Chilip is still called “Merchant” but does not suggest one in her 17th century matron costume, this remains a little disconcerting. Characters who play major roles in one scene return to play minor roles in others which is more than a little confusing. [more]

Peter Pan Goes Wrong

May 1, 2023

The Company soon loses its way as bunk beds self-destruct, lines get mangled, Peter Pan flails about in failed attempts to fly and crocodiles and mermaids parade about on skateboards. If this sounds like a normal production of Barrie’s classic tale, then I am telling it wrong. The main problem with "Peter Pan Goes Wrong" is that virtually all the jokes are physical, an unending series of scenic disasters that become not just predictable, but tiresome.  Even the great physical comedians of the silent film era knew when enough was enough. [more]

Prima Facie

May 1, 2023

The mesmerizing Jodie Comer, making her Broadway debut in the Olivier Award-winning best new play after starring in the genre-subverting BBC show Killing Eve, portrays Tessa (for which Comer also won an Olivier in her West End bow) with stunning fidelity to the pain she causes and endures. While the tension between these two aspects of Tessa's personal history eventually ignite a fervent reassessment of who she has been, who she is now, and who she should be, Comer never gets ahead of herself in the performance. Early on, as Tessa recounts, in predatory terms, conducting a cross-examination that frees a rapist, Comer convinces us, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Tessa not only perceives practicing law as a "game" but also is emotionless about the outcome, no matter the consequences for others. At this point, in hearing Tessa trumpet her job so blithely, the horror is ours alone, because, for Tessa, everything she's saying is just another day at the office. [more]

The Thanksgiving Play

May 1, 2023

Larissa Fasthorse’s "The Thanksgiving Play" gives a good tweaking to those who are so hung up on political correctness that they dare not make a decision. On the other hand, the play reminds us how difficult it is to be fair to all sides of the historical spectrum. The erasure of the Native American point of view is made clear by their very absence from the play, while the problem of educators knowing how to walk the fine line between inclusion and suitability is given a rare airing in this delightful parody. The use of in jokes, theatrical, historical and educational notwithstanding, "The Thanksgiving Play" is a satire that entertains while it makes some very real and needed points about political correctness when dealing with unpleasant American history. [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]

The Singing Sphere

April 27, 2023

I left with questions about what I had just experienced. It was not a feeling of dismissal but one of consideration for the experience. It was and is not a question of good or bad but whether it works or not as a play. The average theatergoer thinks "Waiting for Godot" or "Endgame" are bad plays because understanding them is not readily accessible. While "The Singing Sphere" is not an easy play to engage with, I think it does work, but it is for a select audience. [more]

Plays for the Plague Year

April 26, 2023

While the playlets seem too slight to have much dramatic weight as they are mainly about one minute long, they do have a cumulative effect summing up a year that was like no other in recent memory. Often the scenes feel like they want to go and continue, but Parks keeps them short. Periodically, we have a one sentence scene telling us how many people have died from Covid as of that date. Beginning on March 13, 2020, the first full day of the shutdown, the playlets continue until April 13, 2021, a year and a month from when Parks started. An electronic sign above the stage states the date of each scene and its name which include such titles as “Home,” “Broadway Is Closed,” “The City at 7 PM,” “Who’s Gonna Pay For This?,” and “Hiatus 4 Months: Holding It Together Together.” [more]

Cellino v. Barnes: The Play

April 21, 2023

Where does one begin to tell the story of two manifestly successful lawyers who mixed professionalism with adolescent ideation? A case where one wants a career as a serious law practitioner and the other not so much. But they both want to make money, and they both have egos that want to be in the spotlight. I suspect that Mike Breen and David Rafailedes, the writers, performers and directors of "Cellino v. Barnes: The Play," asked themselves the same question in 2017 when they decided to write a humorous play about the creation and impending demise of the Cellino & Barnes personal injury law firm. Unfortunately, in their effort to find the broad humor in the partnership's creation and end, Breen and Rafailedes missed the mark. [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]

Fat Ham

April 19, 2023

When it comes to modern adaptations of Shakespeare plays, many theatergoers tend to treat them like a test, mentally annotating plot and character correlations as if their high school English teachers were going to tap them on the shoulders and ask, "Did you catch that one?" If you suffer from this same hang up, then consider James Ijames' Pulitzer Prize-winning "Fat Ham" therapy, not only encouraging its audience to break free from fawning fidelity to the Bard but also, more poignantly, tragic endings. Simply put, for Ijames' insightfully idiosyncratic take on Hamlet, we're not in Elsinore anymore, and that's a good thing. [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]

Television

April 17, 2023

Bossert directs his own work here, thereby unfortunately removing any crucial distance from the material.  Where the story of the play and the relationships we see are engaging, the play-within-the-play enacted by Sandra and Barry is not. The narrative there is a sequence of conversations cut off by interruptions that neither add nor detract from the scene at hand.  The real-life interruptions by Wesli as the “director” unhappy with the way the scenes are moving are almost a relief from what the audience has just listened to. The fact that an entire town anxiously awaits each new episode is somewhat unbelievable unless they are truly desperate for diversion. [more]

Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight

April 14, 2023

Gunderson uses two actors to play Emilie and writer Voltaire who was her mentor, companion and lover, and then three actors to play everyone else, from Emilie’s mother, husband and daughter, to servants and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton and poet Jean-Francois de Saint-Lambert. As they do not change their costumes, we are never entirely certain who they are when they reappear. Throughout the play Emilie is working on the physics formula F=mv2 (known as force vive) which she attributes to German mathematician and thinker Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Unfortunately, this math will be foreign to most theatergoers who have not studied physics. Emilie narrates and addresses the audience, then turns back and interacts with the other characters on stage. She also keeps score in chalk on the walls as whether Love or Philosophy is in the ascendance. The play, cast as a flashback, has very short scenes so that a great deal passes in a short time. While the first act seems to be bits and pieces, the second act settles down into a more dramatic confrontation between Emilie and Voltaire and becomes more involving. MacGowan never finds the right tone to accomplish all of this. [more]

Regretfully, So the Birds

April 13, 2023

Silliness and whimsy can often be admirable qualities in a play, but not when taken to the degree playwright Julia Izumi has in her new work, "Regretfully, So the Birds Are," a co-production of and WP Theater and the Playwrights Horizons where the show has been well launched. "Regretfully," directed by Jenny Koons, centers on the trials and tribulations of the Whistler family:  mother, Elinore, in prison for burning her husband alive; Illy and Neel, brother and sister who want to marry each other; sister Mora the cynical third sibling; and Cam, the dead father who has morphed into a snowman. [more]

Bringer of Doom

April 11, 2023

"Bringer of Doom," written by Joe Thristino and smoothly directed by Mark Koenig, is a comedy about Lotte and her effort to exact revenge against her estranged mother, Esme, because of a public humiliation her mother inflicted. She uses an ex-comedian, Demetrius, or more precisely, a no-longer-performing comedian, as the waiter to serve her revenge, cold, but with a measure of spice. His job is to "roast" Lotte's mother with clever rejoinders and barbed put-downs when she comes for dinner at Lotte's apartment. He is to make her highly uncomfortable without causing her to leave. [more]

Smart

April 9, 2023

Mary Elizabeth Hamilton’s Smart has an interesting premise but does not carry out its goal turning quickly into a domestic drama and later a bittersweet love story. The two acts seem to be two different plays while the sketchy characters do not give the fine three actresses much to work from. Even the production values get in the way of understanding the play. Hamilton has a good ear for dialogue but needs to work on plotting and characterization in order to make this a satisfying theatrical experience. [more]

Life of Pi

April 7, 2023

"Life of Pi" is a unique theatrical experience with its animal puppetry, depiction of days on the ocean, and bringing to life an Indian city, circa 1977. It tells a fantastical story with brio and flair making use of all of the theatrical arts. With a cast led by Olivier Award winner Hiran Abeysekera, you could not imagine anyone else in these roles. However, the playwriting and the production do have their flaws which are eventually overcome by its theatricality and storytelling. Kudos to director Max Webster for orchestrating the production so well. [more]

Grief: A One Man ShitShow

April 6, 2023

For the audience, there is an ease of losing sight of the fact that what we are watching is a piece of theatre. Campbell is direct and warm and instructing and sensitive in this piece that he has written. He has the right amount of connection to the material, obviously, as this is a scene from his life, yet he creates the minimal distance from the piece so the audience doesn’t obsess over how maudlin the subject matter is. Instead, the audience can be enlightened by his path. [more]

Darkness of Light: Confessions of a Russian Traveler

April 5, 2023

"Darkness of Light: Confessions of a Russian Traveler," written and directed by Michael Mailer and Alexander Kaletski, is a story of an artist's journey from the restrictions of one political and economic system to the compromises needed in a more open and accepting system. It explores how a Russian artist, Nikolai Rodnin (Jonathan Glass), tries to hold onto the truth of his artistic expression while dealing with the material needs for survival. An important, subtle, and contrasting story is that of his brother Sergei Rodnin (Alex Yuille). [more]

Iceland

March 30, 2023

Composer/librettists O-Lan Jones and Emmett Tinley have created what they refer to as “a re-Creation Myth” in this fascinating interdisciplinary opera theater work entitled "Iceland."  It is profoundly musical in that it embraces both opera and contemporary musical theatre by casting 12 opera singers as The Hiddenfolk and Mythic Beasts of Icelandic folklore and two musical theater singers who would be equally comfortable sitting on the Billboard Hot 100 as the two leads that are pushed together romantically over the course of 17 hours one New Year’s Eve in Iceland. [more]

Lunch Bunch

March 30, 2023

"Lunch Bunch" by Sarah Einspanier and directed by Tara Ahmadinejad is a rapid-fire comedy with farce ensemble timing in the service of a serious underlying topic, presented on a bare-bones set. It is about a group of overstressed lawyers in a public defender's office who think they have the perfect antidote for their daily struggles by sharing lunches. It is funny, touching, and worth experiencing the comic talent of the cast and the amazing flow of the story. [more]

Best Friends

March 28, 2023

The Israeli Artists Project, dedicated to bringing the art and artists of Israel to American audiences, has mounted a production of Anat Gov’s "Best Friends," a zippy portrait of three best friends through the years.  The play, presented alternately in Hebrew and English, fits snugly on the stage of the Rattlestick Theater in the West Village. [more]

Drinking in America

March 26, 2023

Some critics would say Eric Bogosian’s "Drinking in America" is dated, but that’s very much up for argument. The script given to critics for the new production at the Minetta Lane Theatre is marked “Tweaked Drinking In America Script For Audible,” all in caps actually. In all fairness, some of the “current references” particularly with regard to in-demand actor names bandied about in the scene entitled “Wired” are names clearly from another age. That could have easily been “tweaked,” if they really wanted to do that. References to Quaaludes in the scene “Our Gang” reek of history rather than current usage, but then again, is there an easy 2023 replacement for Quaaludes, a drug that was taken off the market around the time the play was first produced? Aside from those references, the twelve scenes that comprise the play remain shockingly topical for our era. [more]

The Good John Proctor

March 25, 2023

Unfortunately, Monohon’s play which takes its cues from Miller’s drama, assumes a thorough knowledge of "The Crucible" and leaves out a great deal of information that would make it easier to follow. For example, John Proctor’s name is never uttered by the girls even after Abigail goes to work for him and his wife in the play. Caitlin Sullivan’s direction is too tame by far so that the play is not very dramatic. The most exciting event, the trial itself, is left as an afterthought and narrated years later by one of the girls after her death. [more]

Trilogy II

March 25, 2023

"Trilogy II" by Garry Batson, directed by Evria Ince-Waldron, is three one-act plays depicting the struggles of African-American families faced with difficult and troubling events. The good and bad things that happen seem random or unfair. According to Batson, the common link among the stories is the clash between good and evil. However, except for "Fort Knox," the remaining two plays, "Flight Risk" and "Ill Winds," focus on aspects of good and bad, not specifically evil. For this reviewer, something evil is an extreme form of bad because not all bad things are necessarily evil. [more]

Arden of Faversham

March 25, 2023

The problem with this production is that although the characters’ behavior is utterly outrageous on the verge of satire, Berger has directed in so flat and bland a style, that shocking lines that should get embarrassed laughter fail to make any impression. Has Berger directed the play absolutely straight knowing that his audience is unlikely to be familiar with it? It would be more fun and rewarding if was as over-the-top as the murderers’ plotting. [more]
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