Don’t be misled by the title of Caroline, the remarkable new work by Preston Max Allen now playing at The Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space. It refers to a nine-year-old who has chosen that name for her new identity – as a girl. She announces her choice to her mother in the play’s first…
Did You Eat?, the current offering from the Ma-Yi Theater Company’s residence at the Public Theater, belongs firmly in the realm of solo performances standing in for therapy, with an excellent performer but a difficult book. In Did You Eat?, Korean-American Zoë Kim, the playwright and performer, shepherds the audience through a lifetime – her…
The 2024 Sony Pictures release Saturday Night dramatizes, and I use the term loosely, the chaos and anarchy that preceded the launch of NBC’s Saturday Night (the Live didn’t happen till the second season) on October 11, 1975. While it illustrates the frantic tugs-of-war among cast members, producer Lorne Michaels, and the NBC brass, it…
“This is what four thousand years old looks like when you moisturize!” So saith Holy Divine, one of the ancient three sisters in a rocking gospel-trio. And we’re off and running on another wild and wonderful Jordan E. Cooper adventure. You remember Cooper’s last mad caper called Aint No Mo’, don’t you, when the playwright,…
Performance: Extraordinary. Story: Heartbreaking. Production: Challenging. Firmly in the school of “solo performance acting with video projections of the actor,” Nothing Can Take You From The Hand Of God gives its star, Jen Tullock, who wrote the play with Frank Winters, a superb opportunity to display her acting chops. Which are significant. She’s superb. She…
There’s a 1940 movie, The Mortal Storm, wherein an average family in the German Alps is divided and undone by the rise of the Third Reich, with tragic results. Since these earnest young Germans are played by James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Robert Young, and Robert Stack, it’s a bit of a challenge to take at…
This Is Not A Drill, now at the York Theatre, offers a pleasant enough way to pass a couple of hours in the theater. If there are no surprises, then also there’s something to be said about smooth sailing and just enjoying the show. The story of This Is Not A Drill follows 3 tourist…
“Once you see, you can’t feign blind.” The line is courtesy of Stalin’s daughter Svetlana, commenting on perception and reality. Played to perfection by Dani Stoller, she is one of several compelling characters in Jonathan Spector’s This Much I Know, now off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters. Spector, who won a Tony for “Eureka Day,” a satiric…
Whip-smart, demanding, as aggressive and changeable as Rupert Murdoch himself, this new play by An Unnamed Source hits the highlights (and lowlights) of billionaire media mogul Murdoch’s mind. Heaven knows that may not be a comfortable place to visit. Jamie Jackson’s superb performance portrays a Medusa-like nest of snakes living inside Murdoch’s head. The media…
Take me to church. Please. Saturday Church, now playing at New York Theatre Workshop, opens with the magnificent, ebullient, Tony-winning, can-do-no-wrong J. Harrison Ghee as Black Jesus, asking, “Can I show y’all what collective love looks like? What collective joy looks like? What collective healing looks like?” As directed by Whitney White and based on…