Alex Simmons

FOOD FOR THOUGHT Dave Hanson’s clever one-act turns awkward honesty into comic gold First dates can be anxiety-inducing to begin with, but what if your first impression became a Tower of Babble? Welcome to Café d’Automatique, where candor is always the order of the day—and perhaps the only order you’ll receive. When Erin (Katie Aldhizer)…

A CLASSIC THAT STILL DELIGHTS Strong performances and lively staging carry the day Small Boat and kotto Productions bring Shakespeare’s romantic comedy The Taming of the Shrew to life in La MaMa‘s downstairs Club Space. An onstage bar before curtain sets the tone for the evening, and by the end of the night, you may have…

JANGLED JAM SESSION This coming-of-age ensemble never quite finds its rhythm In an age where most pre-teens and teens have the world in the palm of their hand via their smartphone, growing up happens faster than ever. Such speed may have benefited ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| at the Vineyard Theatre, which tells…

READING BETWEEN THE LINES OF FAME Broadway’s funniest staged reading proves that truth is often stranger —and funnier—than fiction Yevgeny Yevtushenko famously wrote, “A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.” Judging by the material on display at the opening night of Celebrity Autobiography, many celebrities probably should have stopped at…

A TRIAL FOR LENNY—AND SOMETIMES THE VIEWER A courtroom drama that probes language, censorship, and the cost of pushing boundaries Unique among the performing arts, standup comedy is the only craft that cannot be sharpened without an audience. And, ironically, the only performing art that we allow, even expect, to deeply offend. Who ever heard…

LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN AND AGAIN A high-energy revival proves this cult classic still knows how to party Unless you grew up in a monastery, had a severely conservative upbringing, or are just too young, you’ve probably seen or at least heard of the drag-tastic cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Maybe…

MAY THE FUNNY FORCE BE WITH YOU A solo show that blasts fandom toxicity into hyperspace Plot a course, prime the hyperdrive, and punch it, Chewie! A sci-fi multimedia solo show lands in the 2026 FRIGID New York City Fringe Festival. “Ahsoka Tano is arguably one of the most Millennial Star Wars characters to ever…

A DANGEROUS STORY, TOLD FROM THE OTHER SIDE A provocative two-hander that shifts the lens onto the older man in a fraught relationship Teacher-student affairs are a classic subject of drama for novels, stage, screen, and beyond, from works like The History Boys to Parallel Lines to Notes on a Scandal. First staged in 2020…

A FEMINIST REFRAME Peculiar Works Project’s ambitious reimagining offers striking ideas but struggles to make its case with uneven execution Alessandra Lopez There’s an ancient folktale of a hero who arranges a proper burial for a corpse, whose spirit—the “grateful dead”—would later come to the hero’s aid. A common story passed around to emphasize the…

BIGFOOT! BRINGS DOWNTOWN MUSICAL MISCHIEF UPTOWN A raunchy, campy comedy with big laughs, big fur, and a surprisingly sharp anti-capitalist bite It’s not every day downtown theater energy comes uptown; when it does, it’s almost always sanitized and robbed of the charm and authenticity that made it so deliciously twisted in the first place. Luckily,…

One of the great pleasures of New York City is that it’s a place where it feels perfectly normal to hear someone say, “I’m headed to SoHo to see an adult Christmas puppet show,” and mean it sincerely. Now in its 26th year, Basil Twist’s Puppet Parlor, playing at HERE Arts Center, has become exactly…

A TIME WARP TO THE 1970s WOMEN’S MOVEMENT, REFRACTED THROUGH 2025 EYES STILL SQUINTING TOWARDS EQUALITY “Why does it feel somehow like it’s all slipping away? And how do we get it back?” Susannah Flood That’s one of the questions posed about the condition of gender equality in 2025 America at the start of Liberation,…