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Paola Bellu
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Cabaret & Theater Review: GREY ARIAS (The Flea)
OPERA, DRAG, AND THE POLITICS IN BETWEEN Adrienne Truscott and Le Gateau Chocolat gleefully explore identity, allyship, and the “grey areas” where ideology and performance collide Grey Arias burst onto the The Flea Theater stage like a theatrical meteor from another planet, leaving jaws dropping and eyebrows arching even among those already braced for the…
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Off-Broadway Review: BURNOUT PARADISE (Astor Place Theatre)
FULL SPEED AHEAD Pony Cam turns burnout, chaos, and cardio into delirious theater Dominic Weintraub, Claire Bird, Hugo Williams, William Strom Are you, perhaps, missing the wild energy of Blue Man Group at the Astor Place Theatre? Good news: it has been replaced with something just as unconventional. Welcome Burnout Paradise, the theatrical event that…
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Off-Broadway Review: CHINESE REPUBLICANS (Roundabout Theatre Company)
A POWER LUNCH WITH KNIVES UNDER THE TABLE Ambition, rivalry, and assimilation simmer in Alex Lin’s sharp corporate comedy There are ordinary lunches, and then there are Chinese Republicans lunches, the subject of a new play by Alex Lin, directed by Chay Yew at Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre. In it, four high-achieving Chinese-American…
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Off-Broadway Review: PETITE ROUGE (Company XIV at Théâtre XIV in Bushwick, Brooklyn)
A FAIRY TALE REBORN IN HEELS, CORSETS, AND CANDLELIGHT Little Red gets very bad — and very fabulous — in Company XIV’s Petite Rouge PhillVonAwesome In its twentieth anniversary season, Company XIV unveils Petite Rouge (from Charles Perrault’s 1697 Le Petit Chaperon Rouge) and allows the classic fable of Little Red Riding Hood to frolic…
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Off-Broadway Review: MEAT SUIT, OR THE SHITSHOW OF MOTHERHOOD (Second Stage Theater)
AFTER BIRTH Meat Suit is a carnival of motherhood that mistakes provocation for revelation Meat Suit, or the Shitshow of Motherhood, a Second Stage Theater production which opened last night at the Pershing Square Signature Center, dares its audience to linger in a clownish carnival of motherhood while serving up the glaringly obvious. Written and…
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Off-Broadway Review: THE DINOSAURS (Playwrights Horizons)
A RECOVERY GROUP WHERE LITTLE IS REVEALED AND LESS IS RESOLVED Superb performances anchor a script that withholds more than it delivers In the 1980s, film snobs treated TV like it had crashed the gala in sweatpants. In the 1990s, vinyl purists and digital nerds debated as if civilization hinged on compression. Theatre is the…
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Concert Review: ESPERANZA SPALDING (Well-Being Concert at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Room)
ESPERANZA SPALDING’S HOMEMADE FIELD OF LOVE A communal cleansing at Carnegie Hall Stepping out at night this winter requires real chutzpah because New York City is absolutely freezing, but you can always find small treasures that warm you through both the weather and these bleak political times. I was lucky enough to stumble upon one…
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Off-Broadway Review: ULYSSES (Elevator Repair Service at The Public Theater)
JOYCE’S ODYSSEY ON STAGE Elevator Repair Service turns the impossible into a joyous theatrical sprint Beloved, despised, or abandoned halfway through by most readers, Joyce’s Ulysses is one of those books you know or have heard of. Published after the carnage of World War I, when the world felt confusing and utterly broken, this novel…
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Opera Review: AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS (The Met and Lincoln Center Theater at Mitzi E. Newhouse)
A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE, UP CLOSE AND BREATH-BY-BREATH Opera this intimate feels less like a performance and more like a shared act of wonder This holiday season, multi-Grammy Award winner and Olivier Award–winning star Joyce DiDonato made opera feel truly intimate—an entirely new experience for me. She brought her formidable talent to a brand-new production of…
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Off-Broadway Review: TARTUFFE (New York Theatre Workshop)
MORAL ROT MASQUERADING AS VIRTUE Broderick underplays the zealot Tartuffe in Lucas Hnath’s contemporary take, but the cast keeps the comedy crackling The art of looking virtuous while being utterly fake is a talent as old as theater itself, and Molière’s Tartuffe remains the most iconic theatrical example. Having seen André De Shields’s sly, invigorating version…
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Theater Review: BIPOLAR & THE ENGLISH CHANNEL (Julie Ridge at Theatre Row)
ENDURANCE, MANIA, AND THE WILL TO SURVIVE A raw solo performance that turns lived experience into hard-earned clarity Bipolar disorder, marked by its vertiginous highs and devastating lows, is an incurable condition that exacts a profound toll on those who live with it. Yet within this relentless struggle, many who are afflicted demonstrate a remarkable…
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Off-Broadway Review: QUEENS (Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center)
AN EXCEPTIONAL ENSEMBLE IN A CROWDED PLAY Immigrant stories echo through a Queens basement — and across decades ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ Queens is a New York borough unlike any other, celebrated as the most linguistically diverse place on Earth. Between 160 and 500 languages are spoken across its…
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Off-Broadway Review: NUTCRACKER ROUGE (Company XIV at at Théâtre XIV in Bushwick, Brooklyn)
THE NUTCRACKER: NOW WITH 69% MORE CRACK Because sometimes holiday spirit comes in fishnets and a martini glass While The Nutcracker graces stages worldwide, Brooklyn’s Company XIV continues to reinvent tradition with its famous Nutcracker Rouge, New York’s most sumptuous and indulgent winter holiday treat, at Théâtre XIV in Bushwick’s Graffiti Alley. Combining dance, music, acrobatic…
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Off-Broadway Review: KYOTO (Royal Shakespeare Company at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater)
“It will never be forgiven.” With those chilling words, delivered just days ago, the UN climate chief branded our reckless indulgence in fossil-fueled destruction as a transgression so grave it stains the conscience of humankind, and he is not being dramatic! From Stratford-upon-Avon to London’s West End, and now at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater…
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Dance Review: GRAVITY (Ballet Preljocaj, The Joyce)
Angelin Preljocaj has carved out a daring niche in the dance world, fusing classical ballet with contemporary flair to invent a unique, bold alphabet of movements. Now, the US premiere of Ballet Preljocaj’s Gravity is at The Joyce Theater, and it is an amazing experience, a meditation on the invisible force that binds us all….
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Off-Broadway Review: TARTUFFE (André De Shields at House of the Redeemer)
ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS THE REDEEMER André De Shields should be a landmark; for over six decades, he has towered over the worlds of theatre, film, and television with the kind of presence that cannot be imitated. So it is only fitting that he brings Molière’s Tartuffe to another historical New York institution: the House of…
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Off-Broadway Review: ITALIAN AMERICAN RECONCILIATION (The Flea Theatre)
RECONCILING WITH SHANLEY’S PAST In Italian American Reconciliation, playwright John Patrick Shanley, best known for Moonstruck and Doubt, returns to the Bronx of his youth where conversations required full hand choreography, and no emotion was considered too loud or hazardous. This love story is set in Little Italy in 1986, the year of the play’s…
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Off-Broadway Review: THE HONEY TRAP (Irish Repertory Theatre)
SWEET LIES, STICKY MEMORIES, BITTER GUILT; THE HONEY TRAP STINGS AT IRISH REP In Northern Ireland, The Troubles only ended some 25-30 years ago, though their tensions and legacies reach far deeper into time. Today, Leo McGann‘s play The Honey Trap, now at the Irish Repertory Theatre, reminds us that it was never a tidy…
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Off-Broadway Review: AND THEN WE WERE NO MORE (Stop the Wind Theatricals at La MaMa)
Justice without mercy becomes punishment, and mercy without justice becomes apathy. But how do we strike the balance when the system and the society behind it seem to have forgotten both? In And Then We Were No More, playwright Tim Blake Nelson invites us into a future so plausible it stings, in an unnamed state…
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Theater Review: WEATHER GIRL (St. Ann’s Warehouse)
WEATHER FORECAST: FUNNY AND SUNNY WITH A CHANCE OF ARMAGEDDON In recent years, I have watched a wave of productions by Millennial and Gen Z artists who are, quite understandably, petrified by the future and by the ecological catastrophe we have handed them. Francesca Moody Productions, the British powerhouse behind two of the most successful…
Theater Review: KING HEDLEY II (City Lit Theater / Chicago)
by Croydon Fernandes | November 2, 2026
in Chicago, TheaterTheater Review: BETRAYAL (Marin Theatre / Mill Valley)
by Chuck Louden | November 2, 2026
in Theater, Theater-San Francisco / Bay AreaOff-Broadway Review: WAITING FOR LEFTY (Classic Stage Company)
by Alex Simmons | November 2, 2026
in New York, TheaterTheater Review: CARMELA FULL OF WISHES (Chicago Children’s Theatre)
by Croydon Fernandes | November 2, 2026
in Chicago, TheaterDance Preview: DANCE ME — THE MUSIC OF LEONARD COHEN (Ballets Jazz Montréal / Chicago)
by Croydon Fernandes | November 1, 2026
in Chicago, Dance, ToursDance Review: PAS DE DEUX (American Contemporary Ballet / Los Angeles)
by Nick McCall | October 31, 2026
in Dance, Los AngelesBroadway Review: THE IMAGINARY INVALID (Roundabout Theatre Company / Todd Haimes Theatre)
by Paola Bellu | October 30, 2026
in New York, Theater
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