New York

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…

NEW DANCE-THEATER MAKES A BIG (ILLI)NOISE   For countless millennial hipsters, Illinois  (2005) is THE album of their coming of age, as well it should be. Now, New York City Ballet’s wunderkind Justin Peck (Spielberg’s  West Side Story) and playwright  Jackie Sibblies Drury  (We Are Proud…) translate Sufjan Stevens‘ 2005 concept album into a wordless, glorious dance musical. (front) Byron…

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…

IT WON’T WIN A PULITZER, BUT IT WILL REMIND YOU TO “BELIEVE IN LOVE” It is the fashion nowadays to present musicals with legitimate claims to sophisticated art, with elegant musical settings, deep emotional explorations, and sophisticated social and political analysis. None of this is bad, but what happened to good old clap your hands…

SOMETHING WONDERFUL IS COOKING IN HELL’S KITCHEN What else can be said about Alicia Keys‘  new Broadway musical Hell’s Kitchen, that its recent thirteen Tony Award nominations, including one for Best Musical, haven’t already said (or implied)? Currently running at the Shubert Theatre and presented by multiple producing entities including The Public Theatre – the show…

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…