Sarah Taylor Ellis

FRISK ME AGAIN The hubbub in the lobby of the Public Theater late last Friday night suggested we were in for a dynamic show. Frisk Me: The Songs of Max Vernon packed Joe’s Pub with one of the most energized audiences of friends and fans I have ever seen at this venue, and the few…

HOT AUGUST STRINDBERG NIGHT St. Ann’s Warehouse inaugurates its new space with an often gripping production of Mies Julie, adapted to post-apartheid South Africa. A dense fog sweeps over the earthen, stone-tiled kitchen of an old estate in the Eastern Cape Karoo. These weathered quarters (designed by Patrick Curtis) provide the heated setting for a…

HOUSE  NOT AT  HOME IN THE THEATER My theatergoing companion left the Duke on 42nd Street last night with tears welling in her eyes. She spent much of the subway ride home taking deep breaths to recover from Transport Group’s House for Sale, adapted from Jonathan Franzen’s personal essay about selling his childhood house after his mother’s…

A POETIC BREAKUP The plot of writer/director Pascal Rambert’s play Love’s End is astoundingly simple. A long-term romantic relationship finally reaches a breaking point. The man confronts the woman in an extended soliloquy, after which the woman turns the tables and has her say. This familiar drama nonetheless plays out with incredible intensity. Love’s End…

DRINKS WITH A RAKE Find the nearest bottle of vodka and drink up. Ars Nova’s world premiere of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 – an electro-pop musicalization of a self-contained section of Tolstoy’s War and Peace – offers up a tantalizing environmental experience. Dramaturgically, however, this new musical wouldn’t hold up in…

EXTRAORDINARILY BEAUTIFUL  PIGPEN PROJECT PigPen Theatre Co.’s The Old Man and the Old Moon is guaranteed to gently pluck at your heartstrings. An enchanting fable told through shadow puppetry, movement, music, and theatrical lighting, this ensemble play seems aesthetically filtered through Instagram. A warm glow emanates from the stage of the Gym at Judson, where a…

PINCHES GRINGOS! The aliens have arrived. Mexicans, that is. Fucking Mexicans. And fucking Nigerians. Small town Southern girl Tamara-Lee can’t seem to decide which she hates more. I Hate Fucking Mexicans is a zany satire of cultural stereotypes, and no one is exempt from the raucous critique – particularly the fucking Americans like Tamara-Lee and…

NORTH GOES SOUTH As a child, I flew to the stars with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince – a work of youthful wonder tinged with adult melancholy, loneliness, and wistful philosophical musings. In 1939, Anne Morrow Lindbergh – a novelist in her own right, as well as wife of pilot Charles Lindbergh – found…

COSPLAYING WITH THE BARD A delightful dash through Shakespearean tropes is now the two hours’ traffic of The Connelly Theater stage. Siblings separated in a tempest, long lost lovers, conjoined twins, a criminal mime, and even a conniving witch are all stirred into Kevin Brewer’s fantastical new play Island, or To Be or Not to…

SHOUTING FOR THE MAJORITY In the wake of Occupy Wall Street and the rise of the 99%, Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 political drama An Enemy of the People crackles with contemporary relevance. Manhattan Theatre Club’s production is painted in bold and brash strokes, but it certainly strikes while the iron is hot – just before the…

CHILLING BUT  MADDENING We are bunkered down in a ratty East Village apartment: blood stains smeared across the walls and newspapers plastered over the windows so the sunlight seeps in with a sickly glow. Loose electric wires poke down from the punctured ceiling, and a woman lies face down, sprawled on the living room floor beside…

HAUNTING HOWLS Rose Afratian harbors a dark secret. This wiry old woman’s shoulders are hunched and her eyes are sunken from ninety-one years of hell on earth, living with a sin she dare not share. Still, this staunch Armenian woman endures. In Alexander Dinelaris’ Red Dog Howls, several chilling scenes and gripping performances make up…

FORBIDDEN BETTER THAN BROADWAY Musical theater fans, rejoice! Forbidden Broadway is back – Alive & Kicking! – with a raucous new romp through the current theatrical season. This off-Broadway institution makes a feisty return to the 47th Street Theater, where its caustic parodies will have you cracking up at the mainstream hits – and flops…

WHAT’CHA GONNA DO? In a poignant moment in Act II of the new musical Chaplin, cultural icon Charlie Chaplin realizes that life is not a movie. One has to take the tears with the laughter, and there is no guarantee of a happy ending. As it turns out, life is not really a musical either….

ONLY IN NEW YORK The next time you pass through Times Square, be sure to wave at the tricked out tour bus with windows that soar to the ceiling, flashing LED lights, and a pounding sound system. The Ride, an interactive tour of midtown Manhattan designed by 3D pop artist Charles Fazzino, is a spectacle…

PLODDING ALONG THE TRAIN TRACKS What does it mean to persist in a world without hope? Athol Fugard’s The Train Driver tackles human mortality with grim poetic grace, but the New York premiere production at Signature Theatre lacks theatrical drive. A desolate graveyard lies beneath rusted train tracks in a South African squatter camp just…

CLAP YOUR HANDS IF YOU BELIEVE A theatrical revolution is taking place at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, where a high-tech Broadway spectacle has been swapped for the homespun magic of a talented troupe of players and the audience’s engaged imaginations. Peter and the Starcatcher, a captivating prequel to Peter Pan, inspires childlike wonder. Suspend belief…

TRAPPED IN VIRTUAL LIFE Tune into Findlay//Sandsmark’s fractured bones / let’s get lost for an immersive meditation on the mediatization of contemporary culture. This Norwegian performance art bombards its audience with technological trappings that thrill and terrify, both enhancing and reducing the human bodies on stage. What better location to explore virtual reality than a…