Regina García

Distant Thunder

October 8, 2024

We’ve come a long way from "Annie Get Your Gun" to the new musical "Distant Thunder" produced by Amas Musical Theatre at the A.R.T./New York Theatres. The Irvin Berlin song “I’m an Indian, Too” from "Annie" is filled with silly clichés about our indigenous people that "Distant Thunder" puts to rest. "Distant Thunder," written by Lynne Taylor-Corbett and Shaun Taylor-Corbett (book) and Shaun Taylor-Corbett and Chris Wiseman (music and lyrics), (with additional music and lyrics by Robert Lindsey-Nassif and Michael Moricz,) deals sensitively with issues facing Native Americans today. All of the actors are members or descendants of Native Americans and all give body and soul to their characters. [more]

Between Two Knees

February 19, 2024

At the performance under review, part of the audience found the show hilariously funny, while others proverbially sat on their hands. The show makes use of history, parody, satire, burlesque, musical comedy and tragicomedy, never being consistent to any one genre. At two and a half hours this kind of parody seems a bit too long. "Between Two Knees" is a noble effort to tell the story of one hundred years of Native American suffering through the Lakota tribe, but it seems to want to cover too much in too parodistic a style. [more]

Fur

November 13, 2019

Migdalia Cruz’s "Fur" (presented by Boundless Theatre Company at Next Door @NYTW) has the sensibility of a folk tale, the coherency of a fever dream, and the trappings of a horror movie. It’s an unsettling piece of theater. After you’ve seen it, don’t be surprised if it noses its way into your psyche and burrows into your personal dreamscape. This production, directed by Elena Araoz, is the play’s New York City premiere. (It debuted in Chicago in 1995.) According to Cruz’s stage directions, it takes place in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles suburb, but the playwright isn’t necessarily concerned about specifics of time or place. In fact, the play seems to transpire in some shadowy corner of the collective unconscious. [more]

The Conduct of Life

September 16, 2018

Farce meets tragedy in a fictional unnamed Latin American country in "The Conduct of Life." It’s a raucous yet insightful fantasia about military oppression taking its toll on the populace by the celebrated playwright María Irene Fornés. First performed in 1985 it is being given an inspired revival by the Boundless Theatre Company that is “spearheaded by women and theatre-makers of color.” The play is structured as 19 short, often absurdly funny and sometimes unsettling scenes, some lasting just a few seconds, that total 75 fascinating minutes. [more]

Mud

October 18, 2017

While the acting is compelling, the threesome does not reveal many layers to their characters; they establish a persona and stick to it, without divulging any further information. As Mae, Nicole Villamil is both stoical and passive, a rather flat reading of this ambitious though down-trodden young woman. Julian Elijah Martinez’s Lloyd definitely comes from the lower depths with his vulgar language, his self-pity and his inability to help himself. However, there is little variety in his performance and we have no idea what his relationship with Mae has been up to this time. He does get noticeable stronger after he begins taking the pills the clinic has prescribed. Unaccountably dressed in a sport jacket and a tie in Sarita Fellows’ costume design, Nelson Avidon’s Henry is the biggest enigma of the three. At first reticent and later lascivious, he tells us little about his attraction to Mae - or where he comes from. [more]