Samuel Garza Bernstein

THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF SAVAGES Who would have imagined that a 30-year-old stage adaptation (by Christopher Hampton) of a 1782 novel (by Choderlos de Laclos) would be so devastatingly of the moment. In a time when sexual harassment, abuse, and assault are at the center of a national conversation many hope will bring about overdue…

LIGHTING UP THE SOUTHERN SKY Carmen Cusack is luminous. She uses her whole self’”physically, emotionally, vocally’”to open herself to the audience, holding every last one of us in her loving arms. Cusack has been on a multi-year journey with Bright Star, since the Steve Martin/Edie Brickell musical began in a 2013 workshop by the New…

THE SOLITARY LONELINESS OF LOSS There is something cheeky and even a bit dangerous about a writer reaching far outside his or her community, culture, or country. When an outsider succeeds, though, the unfamiliarity can be an advantage, yielding wonder and illumination’”as happens here with Italian playwright Alessandro Camon’s remarkable new play, now getting its…

DRY WIT AND RIGHTEOUS OUTRAGE The best sequence in this largely solo show starring Joe Morton as civil rights activist, comedian, and writer Dick Gregory, is playwright Gretchen Law’s dramatization of a 1968 interview Gregory gives at the legendary hungry i in San Francisco. By this point in his life and career, he is driven…

THE UNBEARABLE CURSE OF BEING I remember reading Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker review of Gypsy when Tyne Daly first starred as Mama Rose. She described the experience of not being sure beforehand whether she had ever seen the show. The songs were so familiar’”of course she had seen some production or other at some point….

GOD THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER OF ALL GODS I will remember Phylicia Rashad’s performance in Head of Passes until the day I die. She is an emotional hurricane, often still, even funny’”while in the eye of the storm’”but then raging and howling with a pain rooted so deeply inside the love and bondage of…

MISERY LOVES COMPANY In referring to August Strindberg’s 1900 play The Dance of Death as a foreshadowing of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, director Ron Sossi is on firm ground. Strindberg’s mordant characters (Alice, a former actress, and Edgar, an artillery captain) are certainly waltzing to the same music as George and Martha….

A STAR IS BORN Paul Rudnick’s bright new comedy takes place on Oscar night. Michael (Brian Hutchison) is a journeyman actor with a career and life-changing Best Supporting Actor nomination. After years of steady theater work and occasional television guest shots, he is on the verge of becoming a star. His trans nephew Eddie (Tom…

‘SELF DEPORTATION’ OR SIX STAGES OF AMERICAN GRIEF Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In life, death, and in playwright Tom Jacobson’s world view, these familiar five stages to acceptance are missing the one that is most important for survival: Laughing. Life is funny. People are funny. If God exists, He, She, They, or It…

DON’T ARGUE WITH ME, I HAVE CANCER As the play begins, two women are asleep in hospital beds in a shared room with a curtain drawn between them. A tightly wound young woman, Karla (Halley Feiffer) is on one side of the curtain, with the younger of the two patients. She is an aspiring comedian,…

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT One of the brilliant things about Oliver Cotton’s Daytona, is how his dialogue both reveals and conceals at the same time. “Billy, are you in trouble?” Joe (George Wyner) asks his younger brother (Richard Fancy). “I’m 72 now,” is Billy’s answer, a response that says both everything and nothing. Upon learning…

THE HARDEST WORKING GALS IN SHOW BUSINESS One thing is clear: If Bets Malone and Misty Cotton ever choose to sell themselves as an actual country music recording duo, they will be a smash. The intensity and quality of the singing is wonderful. Their blend is perfect, haunting and smooth, most notably on “Heaven, Heartache,…

THE ORIGINAL SISTER ACT This new bio-musical of the legendary gospel/rock crossover star Sister Rosetta Tharpe is at its best when focusing on its three powerhouse female stars. Tracy Nicole Chapman as Tharpe, and Yvette Cason and Angela Teek Hitchman, both in multiple roles, are veteran performers with awe-inspiring voices that take a song and…

SUPER TROUPERS BURN BRIGHTLY UNDER THE STARS I’ve always thought Benny Andersson and Björn Kristian Ulvaeus of ABBA, along with Mamma Mia! book writer Catherine Johnson, were incredibly smart to fashion a narrative around characters the same age as the people who likely most fondly remember ABBA: Baby Boomers and Older Gen-Xers. The young woman…

THE MIRACLE OF LOVE: WINANS STYLE BeBe Winans was on-hand to enjoy a triumphant opening night for his coming-of-age stage musical Born For This, that takes him and his sister CeCe from young adulthood through several decades of their lives and legendary careers. The star-studded audience included Stevie Wonder, Cicely Tyson, Debbie Allen, Sidney Poitier,…

BOOGIE WOOGIE BUGLE GIRLS OF THE U.S.O. Deanna Durbin is all but forgotten now, but there was a time when her movie musicals were so popular, they were said to have literally saved Universal from bankruptcy. In 1936, before Durbin became famous, MGM was choosing between two young singers under contract, and decided to drop…

JACQUES IN THE BOX I think if I had been alive and living in New York in 1968, I would have been beguiled by Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Eric Blau and Mort Shuman translated some 25 of the Belgian singer/songwriter’s lyric-driven French songs and created a four-person revue. Its…

LETTER FROM A NUTTY CRITIC Dear Mr. Ted L. Nancy: You are a funny letter writer. In fact, you are the best letter writer who reads his own letters in a show with an actress reading replies to his letters and a mute clown waving a flag to national anthems that I have ever seen….

PARALLEL UNIVERSES AND THE PHYSICS OF LOVE I have a brother-in-law who is a mathematician and a brother who’s an astrophysicist. Both have tried to explain to me what they do, with little success. Solar winds, dark matter, and pure math remain as impenetrable to me as fantasy football. So, I approached Nick Payne’s Constellations…