By David Schultz Actress Renee Taylor has brought back her one-woman show to her hometown. My Life on a Diet is based on her 1986 memoir about her endless trek through all manner of strange, quirky diet fads. Intermingled with her diet tips, an entire lifetime of struggling with her weight issues, her reminiscences…
by Julia Polinsky Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope would be a pleasure even if all you got was a terrific retro revue of marvelous songs and electrifying singing and dancing. But you get more; you get vignettes of African-American people’s lives, stories told without a word spoken. Evenly matched with their own…
Adam Milano (MAN) Marianne Tatum (Bookseller) By Dierdre Donovan Who said New York theater snoozes during the summer months? With the Potomac Theatre Project/NYC returning to the Atlantic Theatre Company for its 32nd season with three provocative works–George Tabori’s Brecht on Brecht, a quartet from Howard Barker’s Possibilities, and Caryl Churchill’s BBC…
Allen Lewis Rickman Tevye Served Raw, Garnished with Jews From the writings of Sholem Aleichem by Julia Polinsky Shane Baker, Allen Lewis Rickman, and Yelena Shmulenson have lovingly crafted Tevye Served Raw, Garnished with Jews, an homage to Sholem Aleichem+. He wrote the stories that were the basis for Fiddler on the Roof,…
Eli Gelb, Idina Menzel and Will Brittain (Joan Marcus) By David Schultz Playwright Joshua Harmon (Bad Jews, Significant Others, Admissions) offers a tantalizing idea for a play. The bare bones outline is given at the outset. There are actually few surprises in store, but the impeccable cast with assured direction by Daniel Aukin makes…
Stephen Rea and Chris Corrigan. Photo: Ros Kavanagh By Fern Siegel Identity is a loaded word, especially as politics shift. In Northern Ireland, that seismic turn, explored in David Ireland’s subversive-absurdist play Cyprus Avenue, becomes a fiery cauldron of emotions that fuels the unthinkable. There is fierceness to paranoia and prejudice…
Melissa Errico photos by Carol Rosegg By Eugene Paul Some years ago, a mysteriously wise lady of serious years told me that most assuredly in another life I had been a Chinese sage of equally mysterious wisdom. After she laid out her evidence I was not about to disagree. Famed lyricist, Alan Jay…
Solea Pfeiffer, Mykal Kilgore, Shoshana Bean, Colin Donnell by Julia Polinsky Jason Robert Brown made a name for himself with Songs for a New World, back in the day. It was an off-Broadway moment as they were crafted in the 90s: a collection of Rent-like music, put together by a talented, energetic…
Jeremy Beck, Jessie Shelton and Henry Clarke Photos by Todd Cerveris By Marc Miller If you know the name Miles Malleson at all, it’s probably from the sublime 1952 film of The Importance of Being Earnest. There, in the fast company of such lights as Michael Redgrave, Edith Evans, and Margaret Rutherford, Malleson’s…
by Deirdre Donovan Following a season with so many musicals suffering from elephantitis, the musical Lonesome Blues is refreshingly intimate. An homage to the legendary bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson, it breezed into the York Theatre on June 12th and will sojourn there for a brief run. Co-written by Alan Govenar and Akin Babatunde and…