New York

WE HAD A BALL Manhattan Theatre Club’s We Had a World is an unconventional modern-day three-hander memory play that covers roughly 30 years. Our diarist, memoirist, and damn funny playwright Joshua Harmon is trying to make sense of a real-life senseless event at a Passover dinner, but what he creates–with himself as the protagonist Joshua…

UPSIDE DOWN A STRAIGHT UP MUSICAL SATIRE I admire AMT Theater for two key reasons: its dedication to developing new works—particularly musicals, which I’ve witnessed in the past—and its commitment to showcasing up-and-coming talent, often granting well-deserved Off-Broadway debuts. It’s also impressive that this intimate 97-seat venue is staging the two-act musical Upside Down with…

FROM HAVANA TO BROADWAY: A SOCIAL CLUB WORTH JOINING Buena Vista Social Club is a sun-drenched, rhythm-soaked explosion of life, proving that sometimes a show just needs space to breathe—and in this case, to raise the roof. After its more intimate Off-Broadway run at The Atlantic, this production has found its true home on the…

LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL In what may be the slowest lights-up in New York theater, the first cue of Grangeville takes several minutes to complete—perhaps a 400 count. But lighting designer Stacey Derosier isn’t being indulgent. Instead, she masterfully isolates the estranged voices of two half-brothers speaking on the phone. Caught in a void of blackness,…

WIT, WONDER AND WILD CHIMPS Embarking on a theatrical safari at the Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST), I stumbled upon a wildly witty gem tonight that rivals the most exhilarating of jungle adventures. Some plays lecture. Others live. Have You Met Jane Goodall and Her Mother? is the latter—a marvel of a comedy that doesn’t just…

TICK, TICK… ENCORE! LARSON’S TRUNK SONGS SHINE If you’re a fan of potent post-Golden Age theatre music, you should check out a show that just officially opened downtown last night. There’s a lot to see, a lot to hear, and a lot to like when it comes to The Jonathan Larson Project—so head to the…

WHEN CHILDREN’S THEATER IS A BEAUTIFUL THING Two “P” words—“professional” and “pleasant”—describe the stage production in Greenwich Village with two “B” words in its title: Beauty and the Beast. One might also use two “E” words—“earnest” and “eager”—to characterize how its characters dive into the action and moral of the story. The genre of theatre…

GHOSTS WILL POSSESS YOU The world is full of ghosts, and some of them are still people. —Peter Straub, The Throat Outstanding performances from a first-rate cast and Jack O’Brien’s expert direction make his staging of Mark O’Rowe’s new version of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts, currently playing at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center,…

Danny Brown’s two-hander opens with an orgasm and closes with a cathartic cleansing. Between these bold bookends lies 90 minutes of small talk—covering everything from sex and relationships to the kitchen sink. Adam (Ephraim Birney) hosts David (Joel Meyers) in his Upper West Side studio for what he hopes will be a quick, no-strings-attached encounter….

Metamorphoses is the third show by Dmitry Krymov and Krymov Lab NYC that I have seen (the first was Three Love Stories Near the Railroad; the second Pushkin “Eugene Onegin” In Our Own Words), and despite the fact that this production mostly fails, I remain a hopeful fan. Mr. Krymov creates absurdist works that look…