New York

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…

A GROUNDBREAKING ACHIEVEMENT INDEED The short take on this play is that Jake Shore — as they say at the website The Rumpus — WRITES LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER. He is new to me, but he’s not an unknown quantity. At least one critic has compared his previous work to Beckett. In my case, both Harold…

DOWNTOWN URBAN ARTS FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 22nd  SEASON  OF PRESENTING NEW WORKS BY EMERGING PLAYWRIGHTS JUNE 12 – JUNE 29 AT THEATRE ROW (DUAFnyc) Savion Glover   – Photo Courtesy: Savion Glover Productions The DOWNTOWN URBAN ARTS FESTIVAL (DUAF) announced its 22nd Anniversary season, featuring new works by Tony Award Winner Savion Glover and Tony Award Nominee Reg E….

All of Me is a rom-com in which the central couple are wheelchair users and unable to speak; they use text-to-speech technology. The New Group‘s production, which opened last night at Pershing Square Signature Center, is directed with loving care by Ashley Brooke Monroe. Rarely do we see actors perform under such restrictive circumstances. How…

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF OCTOBER 7 BECOME A SHATTERING THEATRICAL EVENT After the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the husband-and-wife team of journalists Phelim McAleer, playwright, and Ann McElhinney, producer, were concerned to notice that “good people were forgetting about what had happened in Israel that day.” They have an impressive resume of covering difficult…

ALL IN A GOLDEN AFTERNOON Dan Lauria‘s gentle two-hander, which opened today at Theater 555, is a sly variation on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Two characters, named simply “man” and “woman,” find themselves at a metaphorical crossroads, alone, with nothing but a bench and a streetlamp to set the scene. For the Off-Broadway premiere,…

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…

REMEMBER, THERE ARE NO SMALL PARTS, ONLY HILARIOUS ACTORS Ronnie Larsen, a prolific stalwart of Queer theatre, Off-Broadway and around the country, has made what clearly qualifies as a triumphant return to New York with The Actors, a hilariously funny play performed with comic grace by a fine company from South Florida, Plays of Wilton…

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…

TASTY BUT FLAT FRYBREAD Carolyn Dunn‘s new play The Frybread Queen features three generations of Navajo women gathered at the reservation home of the family matriarch for the funeral of Paul Burns. Authoritative Dawn Jamieson is the matriarch and the deceased’s mother, Jessie Burns. Ria Nez is Jessie’s equally strong-minded daughter and Paul’s sister Carlisle…

  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…