Qween Jean

Walden

November 12, 2024

Nevertheless, the play is one of several interesting takes on climate change in the theater recently like "Deep History." As the play evolves we are more and more immersed in the problems of climate change that are now only distant possibilities. The actors are compelling but do not entirely inhabit their roles. Making her Off Broadway debut, Rossum, best known for her work in the Netflix's series "Shameless" and film version of "The Phantom of the Opera," is suitably conflicted as one who has given up her chosen career and taken the opposite path. Winters, known for her breakout role in the HBO series "Succession" as well as many major Off Broadway roles, is more controlled as the current astronaut who is confused by her sister’s current choices. However, both sisters are a little too similar to make them dramatic opposites. In the underwritten role of Bryan, Foster is quite appealing though he can’t fill in the gaps that are missing. [more]

Cats:”The Jellicle Ball”

August 8, 2024

The dynamic and exciting dances include the five elements of voguing: catwalk, duckwalk, hand performances, floor performances and spins and dips in various combinations. The competitions which include almost every song are taken from real ballroom events and the names are appear on the rear wall over the glitter curtain in Brittany Bland’s projection design. These include Virgin Vogue, Pretty Boy, Realness, Body, Bizarre, Opulence, New Way Vs. Old Way, Labels, Women’s, and All American. One razzle dazzle competition is the Tag Team Performance to the song “Mungojerrie & Rumpleteaser” which pitted “knockabout clowns” Jonathan Burke and Dava Havuesca in matching costumes with ballerina Baby as Victoria and gymnastic Bryce Farris subbing for Primo as Tumblebrutus. [more]

Jordans

May 12, 2024

In fact, the play which ought to be hilarious is almost devoid of jokes as the premise which is politically incorrect will make many white playgoers uncomfortable – unless this is the point of the play. As the setting is an event space/rental studio/production facility, we see a trendy photo shoot of a high fashion model, a taping of a motivational speaker, and a business meeting to plan a new advertising campaign for a rapper’s new product line, a pop star whose street cred is that he is on trial for aggravated assault and has been to jail a few times for drugs and theft. All of this is pushed to the limit which undercuts its humorous possibilities. Of course, there are the obvious jokes about Michael Jordan and wearing Jordan jeans. [more]

The Seven Year Disappear

February 29, 2024

While "The Seven Year Disappear" may challenge and confuse many theatergoers, people used to performance art may get the in-jokes. Jordan Seavey whose play "Homos, or Everyone in America" was seen in 2016 in the Labyrinth Theater Company at the Bank Street Theater is a sophisticated, seasoned playwright and he and director Scott Elliott make no concessions to their audience. "The Seven Year Disappear" may be most appreciated by devotees of experimental theater but it does make one hungry for Seavey’s next play. [more]

Primary Trust

May 25, 2023

Eboni Booth’s "Primary Trust" at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre is a genial, gentle tale of a genial, gentle young man and his difficulty negotiating the speed bumps of life. What keeps "Primary Trust" afloat is the light touch of its director, Knud Adams, who never lets Booth’s play bog down. Rather than wallow in sadness, Adams permits the actors—all fine—to ride the gentle waves of their fates. [more]

The Seagull/Woodstock, NY

March 3, 2023

Aside from the problem of which translation from the Russian to use, the thorny problem with American productions of the plays of playwright Anton Chekhov is how to deal with the fact the author himself called them comedies but everyone from his early director Konstantin Stanislavski on has seen them as tragedies. Playwright Thomas Bradshaw has neatly solved both problems: in his new adaptation renamed "The Seagull/Woodstock, NY" which recasts the play as an updated modern comedy, he also made the play a very funny satire of today’s culture vultures, thespians and the literati. His version in which all of the names have been Anglicized makes Chekhov’s turn-of-the-last century play very accessible to contemporary audiences which is not often the case with Chekhov adaptations - without making drastic changes. In doing so, it makes whatever parody there was in the original of theater and literary icons of Chekhov’s time now understandable to today’s audiences due to updated references they can recognize. [more]

Des Moines

December 20, 2022

Michael Shannon, Hari Nef, Heather Alicia Simms, Arliss Howard and Johanna Day in a scene from [more]

HOUND DOG

October 30, 2022

Director Machel Ross does little to guide this play to any semblance of cohesion. Scenes 1 and 13, between Hound Dog and Ayse, her childhood best friend, begin with the exact same lines and stage blocking up to a point…so, did one scene happen and the other one not happen? Which is the real scene? Scene 6, between Hound Dog and Yusuf, the neighborhood trash collector and best friend to Hound Dog’s father Baba, happened three days after their meeting in Scene 4, or is it, as Hound Dog perceives, only yesterday? [more]

Wedding Band

May 9, 2022

Alice Childress’ "Wedding Band," which is a difficult play to stage due to its shifts in tone, is a major rediscovery. However, it straddles a thin line between realism and romance and its poetry needs to be handled very carefully. Unlike the tamer "Trouble in Mind," "Wedding Band" has a very strong message and a good deal to say about racism in American in telling its sensitive interracial love story about a time when it was a love that dared not speak its name. While this production makes some problematic choices, the time has certainly arrived for this play to be returned to the American stage. [more]

On Sugarland

March 8, 2022

Aleshea Harris’ third New York stage play following her form-bending "Is God Is" and "What to Send Up When It Goes Down" is epic in all senses of the word: it includes poetry, dance, incantation, comedy and drama. The new play "On Sugarland," an anti-war drama, also harks back to the Greeks, borrowing characters from Sophocles’ "Philoctetes" and Euripides’ "The Trojan Women," as well as the concept of the Chorus. It tells three interwoven stories as well as one communal one and ends with a shocking finale that is the hallmark of Greek tragedy. Director Whitney White’s production with its cast of 14 is quite versatile and lives up to its lofty task. [more]

Black No More

February 19, 2022

"Black No More," the new musical inspired by George S. Schuyler’s 1931 Afrofuturist novel, is the most exciting and inventive new show to be seen so far this season in New York though it is still in need of work. With a book by Academy Award-winning screenwriter John Ridley (12 Years a Slave), the stage version drops Schuyler’s scathing satire of Harlem Renaissance and Depression figures as well as its political election hijinks for a more direct story about race and racism in the United States. As brilliantly staged by Scott Elliott for The New Group, Black No More is also a play of ideas and will keep you thinking and debating long after the final curtain in this story of the sacrifices people have to make to change the world. [more]

Semblance

August 18, 2021

Written and directed by White who is the Obie and Lily Award winning director of "Our Dear Dead Drug Lord" (WP Theater) and "What to Send Up When It Goes Down" (Public Theater, BAM Fisher and Playwrights Horizons), a NYTW Usual Suspect and former NYTW 2050 Fellow, among other impressive credits, "Semblance" asks the question: in your everyday life, how do you encounter Black women? What do you see and what do you assume? Nikiya Mathis plays seven women from all walks of life, six of them depicted in various jobs and careers and each in her own setting. The women address us directly: a line worker in a salad take-out restaurant, a nanny and caretaker with her charge in Prospect Park, a chart-topping artist preparing for a music video, an unemployed mother getting her nails done in a salon, a public figure such as a politician about to be interviewed on a news program, a bus driver on her run on an MTA bus, a medium to low level consultant in an office, and finally the actress herself as she removes her makeup. [more]