Paola Bellu

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…

A MEAL THAT’S HARD TO DIGEST Staff Meal at  Playwrights Horizons is a light, surreal play with many points and no resolutions, intentionally unclear, written by  Abe Koogler  and directed by Morgan Green. Mina (Susannah Flood) and Ben (Greg Keller) are customers of the same coffee shop. They exchange head nods, a ‘hi’ or at most an awkward…

REIGNITING TAMARA DE LEMPICKA [Editor’s Note: Even with tonal problems, I enjoyed Lempicka, but a crowded season won out, and the new musical officially closes on May 19, 2024. Therefore, we are republishing our review today, so you can catch it soon. Actor George Abud is remarkable; his performance is one of the biggest snubs…

A PLAY FOR THE PEOPLE Written by Ibsen in 1882,  An Enemy of the People  is a powerful drama that reminds us, as a discouraging premonition, how people would go against truth and honesty in order to protect their personal interests. This version, adapted by playwright  Amy Herzog and directed by her husband Sam Gold  at  Circle in the Square…

STILL WATERS RUN DEEP Lia Romeo‘s  Still  at the DR2 Theatre, is a moving, intimate  play starring two confident actors, Jayne Atkinson  as Helen and  Tim Daly as Mark, who inhabit their roles with naturalism and nuance. Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt had only them in mind when she staged it because they almost never move, it’s all about their dialogue, and…

REIGNITING TAMARA DE LEMPICKA An epic story of entangled triangles is taking place at the Longacre Theatre,  where a happily married young woman falls in love with another young woman, a sex worker. If that isn’t scandalous enough for 1920, let’s add that our heroine’s commitment is to her husband, her passion to her new lover,…

A STEREOPHONIC SHOW WITH A MONOPHONIC SCRIPT Stereophonic was so evenly cherished by critics in its Off-Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons that it transferred to Broadway, where it opened tonight at The Golden Theatre. Why? The jury is still out. Andrew R. Butler and Eli Gelb It takes place in a Californian recording music studio…

A FISH OUT OF WATER The use of drama as a didactic tool usually works when we are learning new things or seeing old things through a different lens. Kia Corthron‘s Fish at Theater Row  starts right away with two known facts we should never forget: in America, rich areas end up with well-funded public schools…

PUSSY POWER How can we eradicate misogyny? Meet vagina dentata, a penis-eating vagina, the product of an ancient folk tale that exists in virtually every culture, and it has now landed at Playwrights Horizons in the form of a shameless, outrageous, campy-horror musical, Teeth. It is based on a eponymous 2007 film written and directed…

DOG AND PONY SHOW Looking at the long line that stretched all the way to 7th Avenue to get inside the 1920s Imperial Theatre, I thought I was about to see a masterpiece. I was not familiar with the plot but I knew it was a medley of Circus Arts and Broadway Theater, an alluring…

ONE FOR THE NOTEBOOKS While specialty branded tissue boxes are sold for $5 at the merch stands, the ushers at the Gerald Schoenfeld  Theatre should insert more in the playbill of The  Notebook. Whether you have had a dear one suffer from conditions that affect memory and thinking, or if you are just a sucker for love…