Paola Bellu

Humor leads to the release of endorphins in the brain, which help to control pain.   — RA Haig The Anatomy of Humor A play based on a grief group therapy session and life after an important loss does not sound like a cheery event to experience on a hot summer’s day but playwright Doménica Feraud…

IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A GREAT JOB, HEAD TO THE HAYES THEATRE Two plays on therapy sessions presented at the same time a few blocks apart certainly show a phycological trend among young New York playwrights. At Pershing Square Signature Center, Dominéca Feraud’s Something Spectacular deals gently and comically with significant loss while  Max Wolf Friedlich‘s…

IN A DELICIOUSLY CLAUSTROPHOBIC BOX AT OUT OF THE BOX Out of the Box Theatrics  is presenting an intimate, hilarious, original play called  Inspired  by  True  Events  – written  by  actor, writer and filmmaker  Ryan Spahn  and directed  by  Knud Adams  – that deserves a lot of praise for its organic realism, flowing dialogue, and unconventional twists. The setting is the green room (the performers’ resting area) of…

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Benjamin: Yes, sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Benjamin: Yes, I am. Mr. McGuire: Plastics. Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean? Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it? — from The Graduate…

WE’VE GOT TO GET OURSELVES BACK TO THE GARDEN When The Sheen Center  announced  Ed. Weinberger’s new play The Journals of Adam and Eve starring Hal Linden  and  Marilu Henner, I thought it was a perfect trinity, a legendary event not to be missed, and in the end it was. Weinberger’s sardonic script, an adaptation of Mark Twain’s short…

MUCH NOTHING ABOUT ADO Presenters Kelsey Grammer and Faith American Brewing Company offer a production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at the  Gene Frankel Theatre that is a daring experiment considering there are 15 actors from a rotating cast on such a tiny stage. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem quite so crowded given the bare set…

HENRY, SWEET HENRY Enter Central Park at West 103rd and look for the closest, large meadow. Bring a blanket or a chair with you because you arrived at the “first stage” of Shakespeare’s  Henry IV  (a blending of Shakespeare’s  Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2) produced by New York Classical Theatre. Their mission is to reinvigorate and create…

TWAS BRILLIG! YOU’LL GET A HEART-ON IN THIS SEXY HOLE “All in the golden afternoon. / Full leisurely we glide” is part of the opening poem of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland before she follows the white rabbit and falls into the hole. When you get out of the Jefferson L subway station in…

A NEW SPECIES OF ACTRESS Maia Novi’s  Invasive Species  is a topsy-turvy meta play that reflects its plot: a moment in the life of a confused young woman infected with the acting bug. Or so it seems at the beginning; very soon we discover that the core of the piece is dedicated to mental illness, a delicate…

JOY JOY JOY JOY JOY JOY JOY Julia Masli’s show Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha has finally arrived at the  SoHo Playhouse after a successful run last year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and it is a riot. Masli is an award-winning clown from Estonia, now based in London; when I went, the house…

OH, THE HUMANITY! Remember the 80s? Reaganomics here, Thatcherism abroad, apartheid, the tragedy of AIDS that ended up killing more than 700,000 people in the US alone, materialism, consumerism and lots of new music I still hear everywhere I go. The world premiere of Jimmy Tingle: Humor and Hope for Humanity, which opened tonight at…

Two five-star Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows are now at the Players Theatre and you don’t want to miss them. Modern Witches  is a solo show written and performed by  Katie Kopajtic – a queer writer and actor whose work spans theatre, film and digital publication – where witchcraft meets the great Virginia Woolf. Kopajtic plays a lesbian…

  YOU’LL SAY UNCLE Anton Chekhov’s 1897  Uncle  Vanya  is a comic tragedy and one of the hardest plays to stage because the main actors have a significant change of identity throughout the story, and the director has to make the transition into the dramatic part smooth and credible. In  Heidi Schreck‘s version at Lincoln Center, the plot remains linear…