Count Wilhelm (Clint Hromsco) and Kabarett Headliner Rosie Penn (Amy Londyn) by Julia Polinsky If you like junior high drama-club level musical theater, you’ll love Write Act Repertory Theater’s production of Michael Antin’s Lili Marlene, currently running at St. Luke’s, on 46th Street, Tuesdays through the October. The show has all the…
Phylicia Rashad and cast photos by Joan Marcus By Arney Rosenblat There is no more perfect place than the open-air Delacorte Theater in Central Park with its woodland backdrop and Belvedere Castle turret to set the mood for Shakespeare’s Fairyland in Midsummer Night’s Dream where director Lear deBessonet has chosen to explore with…
Ben Curtis, Kathleen Huber, Julie Campbell, and Jacques Mitchell (© Russ Rowland) by Deirdre Donovan Plays about gun shootings seem to be the rage on New York stages nowadays. Moss Dewey becomes the latest playwright to try his hand with this hot-button topic in his Crusade of Connor Stephens. Directed by Moss,…
Namir Smallwood And Karen Pittman. Photos By Jeremy Daniel. By Ron Cohen The words come at you like machine-gun fire in Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline, and they are piercing, powerful and well-aimed. Morisseau has in her sight two deeply complex targets: the corroding educational pipeline with its failing inner city public schools and the…
Katy Sullivan and Victor Williams by Deirdre Donovan Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living at New York City Center Stage 1 isn’t light entertainment. But, as directed by Jo Bonney, this bi-plotted play can be an eye-opener for understanding how persons with physical disabilities cope with life. Under the aegis of Manhattan Theatre…
George Morfogen Jean Lichty Korinne Tetlow and Larry Bull By Arney Rosenblat The Traveling Lady by Horton Foote is a poignant story of longing and remorse set in a rural 1950’s Texas town. On the surface, the lives portrayed may appear remote to the in-your-face tell-all lifestyle of the typical Manhattan dweller,…
By Ron Cohen Phrase of the day is deus ex machina. Don’t bother clicking on or getting out your dictionary. Borrowed from the Greek, it translates literally as “god from the machine” and has evolved into a dramaturgic term referring to an unexpected or surprising – maybe even illogical — turn of plot that…
by Julia Polinsky So often, words are open to interpretation. In the best possible way, interpreting almost every word spoken makes Lauren Yee’s In A Word deeply engrossing, a surprise in a play so short. Usually, “80 minutes no intermission” is code for “we know it needs work, but don’t want…
By Eugene Paul When you’re invited early to the performance in order to brave the bowels of Mistress Overdone’s bordello to get to your seat – you’re meant to stare at the deliberately malodorous collection of treasured objects therein, from a wall art five foot penis to a less endowed masked…
by Deirdre Donovan The American loser gets his day in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins. Sondheim’s 1990 vaudeville musical features two centuries of villains who have tried to kill the U. S. President. Some succeeded, others didn’t. But one thing was believed by all these historical reprobates, and dramatized by the Proprietor in the show’s opening…