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Angry Alan

July 11, 2025

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]

Floyd Collins

April 29, 2025

Unfortunately, while the carnival atmosphere in the field above the cave increases, the musical is mostly a waiting game: if and when Floyd Collins will be brought up from the deteriorating cave. The emotions that you would expect as time begins to run out as passageways become either waterlogged or impassible are not in evidence except for Floyd’s father who is more concerned with finances that his son’s life. Floyd himself is often depicted as delirious or depressed so that we don’t get much of an arc of his emotions. [more]

Hold Me in the Water

April 27, 2025

That balance—between emotional vulnerability and razor-sharp humor—is what elevates "Hold Me in the Water" beyond the sea of solo shows that mine personal experience for applause. Haddad’s artistry lies in his fierce honesty and unsparing introspection. He examines his own longing, joy, and heartache with something approaching clinical precision, yet never loses the pulse of the deeply human. He never asks for pity, and when disappointment inevitably arrives, he extends surprising compassion—even to the one who’s let him down. [more]

Grangeville

March 3, 2025

"Grangeville" ultimately revolves around the fragile, strained bond of brotherhood—or, more accurately, half-brotherhood—and both actors excel in capturing the tender nuances of this dynamic. Their performances resonate with a delicate authenticity, portraying two damaged individuals tentatively reaching toward one another, aware that reconciliation may or may not be in their future. The emotional pull of their evolving connection is subtle, yet profoundly moving. [more]

Romeo+Juliet

November 11, 2024

This is another one of those cut down versions of Shakespeare with only ten actors in total. As result, seven of the ten actors double (one triples). The problem is that almost all of the actors have to appear in every scene to fill out the stage. It is also very difficult to know who is who with almost every actor (other than the two leads) playing more than one character, some in gender swaps. The Nurse played by (Ms.) Tommy Dorfman also plays Tybalt, while Mercutio, The Friar and the Prince are all played by actress Gabby Beans. [more]

The Big Gay Jamboree

October 31, 2024

Following her star turn as “Celine Dion” in "Titaníque" which she co-wrote, Marla Mindelle has a new role in "The Big Gay Jamboree," another parody musical which she co-wrote with Jonathan Parks-Ramage. As Stacey, with a degree in musical theater, on her wedding day to chauvinist millionaire Keith, she wakes up to find herself trapped in an Off Broadway musical comedy, circa 1945, in the provincial town of Bareback, Iowa. Rather scattershot with its many multitudinous references to both pop culture and musical theater, the show is both raunchy and erotic in the style of a cabaret or nightclub act. The corny humor may charm some theatergoers, but put others off by its old-fashioned and familiar humor spiced up with bawdy, off-color jokes. [more]

Someone Spectacular

August 13, 2024

Doménica Feraud who has also written "Rinse, Release" has made a career of writing about very human psychological problems. While "Someone Spectacular" is rather untheatrical in its presentation as there are no fireworks which you might have expected in the situation, the characters become more absorbing as we get to know them, their stories and their problems. Not only is it all very real but it is easy to identify with one or the other as we all have gone through some loss in our lives. Tatiana Pandiani’s direction is smooth and fluid if a bit too serene. Some may also find the play comforting if they are going through the same thing or have suffered a loss recently. For the record, that title is explained near the end when Thom states “I lost someone spectacular” which how all the characters feel about their losses. [more]

Isabel

June 25, 2024

"Isabel" is a story written by reid tang and directed by Kedian Keohan. It uses various stylistic techniques to tell the story of a trans sibling relationship. It has elements of dark comedy mixed within a dramatic arc of psychosexual exploration of gender, all wrapped within a framework of dark mystery but without a clear point of view. The performances are uneven, the “smoke” special effect is distracting, and the staging misses defining the locales of the scenes. The production comes across as more of a dress rehearsal than a fully-realized staging. [more]

The Welkin

June 24, 2024

It is the first year that Haley’s comet has been predicted. Sally Poppy, trapped in a loveless marriage at age 21, has committed a murder with her lover of a child from a rich family she has worked for. She has been sentenced to death by hanging and then to be anatomized (you really don’t want to know). However, she has declared she is with child. If it is true, she will be deported to America after the child is born. But is it true? Twelve local matrons have convened in an unheated upper room of the courthouse to decide on the truth of her statement, from women who know her to be a liar, to those who pity her hard life, from older women with many children, to young ones about to have their first child, from a gentlewoman down to a simple farmer’s wife. The central character is Elizabeth Luke (played by film and television star Sandra Oh), the local midwife who does not wish to see injustice occur. She has brought Sally into the world but though she doesn’t know her since, she feels that the all-male court has not given her a fair chance. On the opposite side is Mrs. Charlotte Cary, a colonel’s widow who is convinced from private knowledge that Sally is a bad one and could be guilty of any crime. [more]

Three Houses

May 25, 2024

Someone once coined the adage, “Write what you know.”  For the past few seasons, we have seen many writers have a lot to say about surviving the Covid lockdown, but none so eloquently as Dave Malloy in "Three Houses." Where there is often the sameness in the stories we’ve heard thus far, Malloy chooses to give us three not so disparate individuals each with a particular heartbreaking loneliness. All three tales are prefaced “so this is the story of how i went a little bit crazy living alone in the pandemic.” Where aloneness is ripe for scenes that are maudlin, Malloy setting these tales to music is rapture. [more]

Oh, Mary!

April 9, 2024

No one should be sacrosanct or above satirical treatment, not even our heroes.  Everyone has feet of clay.  Cole Escola in their huge hit "Oh, Mary!" at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Greenwich Village certainly believes this.  Their over-the-top, irreverent take on Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth is so scurrilously sexual that it is difficult to avoid guffawing at their magnificent awfulness helped by Escola’s constant silly shtick and blatant playing to the audience, all of whom seemed to be having fun. [more]

An Enemy of the People

March 31, 2024

The concept of alternate facts was not created under the Trump Administration. In 1882 Henrik Ibsen wrote "An Enemy of the People" in which a medical report that a town’s new spa is polluted by toxic bacteria which will cause an epidemic is contradicted by financial and political interests which will be brought down by the revelation. Amy Herzog’s new American adaptation could not be timelier after the pandemic which we just underwent. This forceful and vigorous production led by television stars Jeremy Strong ("Succession"; "Masters of Sex") and Michael Imperioli ("The Sopranos"; "The White Lotus") is robustly staged by Herzog’s own husband, controversial director Sam Gold. This is a play that has been staged when needed at various times in our history such as Arthur Miller’s adaptation during the McCarthy Era. [more]

Appropriate

January 10, 2024

Not only is Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ "Appropriate" a classic American family drama with a new wrinkle, it is also a trenchant and scorching look at American racism which is just under the surface. So fine a playwright has Jacob-Jenkins become that every line of dialogue develops character and plot. What is most shocking about the play is how little the younger generation depicted knows about its American history, things we all should be aware of. Lila Neugebauer’s production for Second Stage mines all of the play’s nuances and her staging is smooth and effortless. The cast led by stage, screen and television stars Sarah Paulson, Corey Stoll and Elle Fanning (in her Broadway debut) make the most of their many opportunities. "Appropriate" is the most satisfying new American play on Broadway at this time and should not be missed. The running time may seem long but the rising tension and periodic revelations make the play feel like it could even be longer. [more]

(pray)

October 15, 2023

nicHi douglas’ vision is one of evocative beauty, one that gives us stage pictures to treasure for some time. The seated women fanning themselves with beautiful white fans as they watch one of their own reading a passage or singing is a natural touch. Even the graphic for the show gives us pause – the word “pray” surrounded by two hands creating the parentheses denotes how personal the power of an individual’s prayer is. douglas’ church is almost utopian in its design in that it welcomes all with no judgment…even the “mixed company” of whites present at the service who might be startled by how genuinely euphoric the service is. Her choreography, like her direction, is empowered by a true spirit of celebration, reminiscent of the great Alvin Ailey masterwork, "Revelations." [more]

Infinite Life

September 21, 2023

Ever since Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker adapted 'Uncle Vanya" for a 2012 production at the Soho Rep, her plays like "The Flick," "John" and "The Antipodes" have becomes more Chekhovian: not a great deal happens but characters live out their daily lives. In her new play "Infinite Life," she has gone even further with the silences and the pauses that she has become famous for. Under James Macdonald’s superb direction, we watch five women and one man read, sleep, talk and sip water or juice on the patio of a wellness clinic in Northern California trying to deal with their chronic pain. Not much happens but, on the other hand, these people reveal their whole lives before they complete their treatments and go back to their previous existences. [more]

Public Obscenities

March 11, 2023

Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s "Public Obscenities" having its world premiere at the Soho Rep is an immersive story into Bengali culture in Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta. Directed by the author in 12 episodes which are given chapter names, this two hour and 50 minute play is as much like a television mini-series as it is a family saga. The realistic production resembles a film as much as it is possible on a stage with our attention being guided to various alcoves as though they were film cuts on the remarkable setting by the collective dots. The play is challenging as the first long extended scene is mainly in Bangla, the language of Kolkata, without supertitles. While the rest of the play is translated when it is bilingual, the dialogue is studded with Bangla words which are left up to the audience to figure out. [more]

You Will Get Sick

November 8, 2022

Ostensibly a comedy, or a tragi-comedy, or a dystopic mashup of "The Wizard of Oz" and "Field of Dreams," Diaz's play could possibly be enjoyed as a befuddling trifle if not for its serious pretensions about morbidity and mortality. Both aspects of this double downer involve a young man (the hopelessly adrift Daniel K. Isaac) recently diagnosed with a terminal disease that Diaz, desperately straining for universality, never identifies. He also doesn't note any character names in the program's cast list, referring to each of the actors only by the numbers 1 through 5, even though character names are used in the script. This concealment likely is a way of protecting the play's huge final reveal, or it could have another point that exists in Diaz's noggin but not in mine. [more]

Baldwin & Buckley At Cambridge

October 14, 2022

"Baldwin & Buckley at Cambridge" should stir up controversy as their 1965 topic is still relevant. Such a debate today would have a great deal more ammunition than either of these men had at the time. However, one can still hear both points of view today given by liberals and conservatives, respectively. The fact that the Baldwin/Buckley debate is still relevant can be witnessed from the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2013 as well as the 2019 publication of "The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, Jr., and the Debate over Race in America" by Nicholas Buccola. This is a question which has not been resolved in the intervening 57 years. [more]

Golden Shield

May 23, 2022

Although playwright Anchuli Felicia King’s plays have been performed in London, Washington, D.C., Staunton (Virginia), Melbourne, and Sydney, her Susan Smith Blackburn Prize-nominated "Golden Shield" appears to be her first New York main stage production. Ostensibly about a young, idealistic lawyer’s attempt to bring her sister on board as a translator in a risky legal battle with a multinational tech corporation, the play is about half a dozen other things as well: sibling rivalry, child abuse, ethical turpitude, human rights issues, governmental suppression of the internet, legal loopholes, and corporate greed. The play actually conflates two different very real lawsuits (against internet giants Yahoo and Cisco) which may explain why it is initially so complicated. [more]

Out of Time

March 5, 2022

Conceived and directed by Les Waters, his staging of Out of Time is of purposeful simplicity. The actors are seated, standing or in motion fulfilling the intentions of each author. The stage is set with scenic designer dots’ atmospheric assemblage of gauzy curtains and minimal furnishings which abstractly suggest different locales and tones. Reza Behjat’s clinical lighting design and Fabian Obispo’s modulated sound design successfully accentuate and realize each of the diverse works. Black, white and red are the colors of Mariko Ohigashi’s smart costume design. "Out of Time" is a fine opportunity to experience some stimulating new dramatic writing and uniformly superior acting. [more]

Morning Sun

November 12, 2021

In a departure for him, the three actresses play all of the characters, both female and male, and are listed in the program simply as 1, 2 and 3. While the play feels undramatic and has no high points it does put the entire 67 years of the life of its heroine Charlotte (Charley) McBride played by Falco center stage. This low-key form seems to be the point for Stephens: life is a series of moments, like beads on a string, rather than big explosions or confrontations. With Brown playing her mother Claudette and Marin playing her daughter Tessa, both actresses also take turns narrating and playing other people in Charley’s life: her father Harold, her best friend Casey, her lover Brian, her husband Edward, her Uncle Stanley. Not only is the drama low-key, the characters play ordinary people, a saleswoman at Macy’s, a receptionist at St. Vincent, a janitor at the YMCA, the sort of people one had met or can identify with, unpretentious and unassuming: what most of the world is made up of. [more]

Copyright Jack Quinn, 2001-2023