Kevin Vavasseur

EXCEPTIONAL EXCEPTION High school is a time of many rules, sometimes excessively so. How to dress, who to hang with, what’s in, what’s out, where to go, what to listen to — do you identify with the group or be true to yourself? And that’s just from one’s peers. Run afoul of authority figures and…

QUE SERí,  SERí Those of us of a certain age may remember the now classic opening credits of the popular, seventies, television sitcom The Odd Couple.   Right before the catchy theme music would commence, a deep voiced announcer would state the show’s simple premise, “Can two divorced men share an apartment – without driving each other…

WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS FAT HAM The Father/Son relationship can often be difficult. It can be hard even when the father and son like, let alone love, each other. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the young prince is so enamored of his recently deceased father, King Hamlet, he refers to him as a “Hyperion.” In…

DOES GOD MAKE A CASE? I liked Samuel D. Hunter‘s A Case for the Existence of God. I didn’t love it, just liked it. Admittedly, I’m in the minority opinion on this one, as many people unabashedly love this well-executed production, currently performing at Signature Theater. Of course, what I like or love is immaterial…

LIKE A ROLLING STONE I imagine that some time back, the Theater Gods were sitting around talking. They had the idea to collaborate on a stupendous theatrical event. They thought to combine the best of film, stage and television production techniques with flawless acting, inspired direction, artful lighting and brilliant sound — all in support…

AS  ¡AMERICANO! AS APPLE PIE The Merriam-Webster dictionary (remember dictionaries?) lists two definitions for the word dreamer. The first is simply “one that dreams.” The second definition is “a person living in the United States without legal status who arrived as the child of someone who did not have the documentation required for legal entry…

FINALLY IN THE LOOP A Strange Loop, the new Broadway musical that currently towers above the rest, is a Brilliant show. With book, music and lyrics by Michael R. Jackson, this Brilliant show is also a Personal show. And a Troubling show. And a Pulitzer Prize-winning show. And a Thoughtful show. And a Silly show….

WALTZING AROUND AUNT SUSAN Aunt Susan & Her Tennessee Waltz by Toby Armour is one play in two acts that feels more like two, one-act plays on the same bill. The acts have little in common, other than being dramatizations of two early champions of Women’s Suffrage – Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt….

FUNNY, HOW IT KINDA WORKS On the Internet exists a theater-centered, YouTube channel called “Staged Right”. And there’s an episode on Staged Right called Fanny & Barbra and the Legacy of Funny Girl. This thirty-minute documentary explores the real Fanny Brice, how the original stage production of Funny Girl came to be and how the…

TASTY BIRTHDAY CAKE NEEDS MORE LAYERS In playwright Noah Haidle’s new play Birthday Candles, currently running at the American Airlines Theatre, television star Debra Messing ages before our very eyes. When she first enters the stage, Ms. Messing is 17. Then she’s 18. Then she’s 38. We know that because it is in the dialogue….

NOT SO LITTLE ANYMORE Once upon a time there was an aviator. One day, the aviator’s plane crash landed in the Sahara Desert. The aviator survived but his plane was damaged. After landing, the aviator soon met a little prince from another planet — a planet so small it only held a rose, some shrubs,…

PLAY BALL! Get your popcorn and peanuts and Cracker Jack. Grab your Empires pennant and Empires cap and maybe your Empires team jacket. Then head on down to the ballpark or, in this case, the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway. For inside is now housed a locker room, a dugout, a field of dreams and…

GONG WITH THE WIND In Charles L. White’s new play Gong Lum’s Legacy, currently running at Theatre @ St. Clements in New York City, things happen very quickly. A young Chinese man, a recent immigrant from China, falls in love with a young African American woman within a few minutes of meeting her. However, the…

A NOT SO PLAIN JANE Did you know that William Shakespeare was a narcissistic, whiny, pansexual, selfish, misogynistic, plagiarizing, womanizing fop? Scholars may debate the accuracy of this description but in playwright Talene Monahon’s riotous new comedic farce, The Lamentable Comedie of JANE ANGER, that Cunning Woman, and also of Willy Shakefpeare and his Peasant…

DECORATIVE CHINA Immediately upon entering The Shiva Theater within The Public Theater building, the audience for The Chinese Lady is greeted with an onstage shipping container that fills the playing space. It is a bit off-putting but mostly curious. And, as it turns out, a perfect image to start playwright Lloyd Suh’s exploration of the…

VIRGIN PLAY GETS TESTED AT IRISH REP Ciara Ní­ Chuirc’s new play Made By God, now being given its world premiere run by Irish Rep, is described in the show’s promotional materials thusly: Made by God features the true and tragic story of the 1984 death of Ann Lovett and her newborn baby in Granard,…

A 1913 PLAY IN MINT CONDITION In a coal-mining district in the Erewash Valley of the English Midlands, lives a young miner named Luther. Luther has been married to his hyper-critical bride Minnie for all of seven weeks. Luther’s father is dead but his domineering mother, Mrs. Gascoyne, is very much alive. His younger brother…

MUSIC MAN HATH CHARMS TO SOOTH THE SAVAGE BREAST “Oh, there’s nothing halfway about the Iowa way to treat you, when we treat you, which we may not do at all” sing the taciturn and straight-shooting citizens of River City, Iowa, shortly after the curtain rises on Meredith Willson’s classic Americana musical The Music Man….

BLACK NO MORE: A NEW MUSICAL George Schuyler’s classic novel Black No More — written during the famous Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s — is a funny, absurdist, searing indictment of American White Supremacy ideology. It also pointedly skewers hierarchies based on physical appearance created during American slavery that privileged a white, European…