Ito Aghayere and Melanie Nicholls-King Photos by Joan Marcus By Michall Jeffers The United States is a nation of immigrants. The tug-of-war between assimilating and keeping tradition alive is indeed Familiar to many Americans. And what better way could this conflict come to a head than planning a wedding. Marvelous Chinyaramwira (Tamara Tunie) and her…
Photos by Joan Marcus Reviewed by Eugene Paul They were the most successful religious community in the country. In addition to their farming properties and industries, their stunningly simple esthetic continues to affect millions with its beauty. At their peak, they numbered 5,000. Today, there are six. These are the Shakers, more properly, the…
Kellie Overbey, Emily Walton, Beatrice Tulchin, and Shannon Harrington Photo: Richard Termine. By Marc Miller The title Women Without Men evokes one of those 1950s women’s-prison melodramas, where Hope Emerson terrorizes Eleanor Parker or Ida Lupino bats Phyllis Thaxter around, while Agnes Moorehead or Howard Duff look helplessly on. Hazel Ellis’s 1938 drama, as…
Erin McCracken as Patsy Cline Photos by John Vecchiolla By Ed Lieberman The Westchester Broadway Theatre’s latest production is Always . . .Patsy Cline, a tribute to the famous country singer, whose life was tragically cut short in a plane crash in 1963, at the age of 30. Cline, who was the first woman…
Richard Johnson photo by Farnaz Taherimotlagh. Pappy on da Underground Railroad R. Pikser The Gene Frankel Theater is what used to be called a black box. A few seats, minimal performance space, a piano, and good lighting in what used to be an inexpensive part of town, allowed performers to hone their…
Hilly Bodin as Snow White and Courtney Giannone as The Prince By Edward Rubin The ad campaign for Company XIV’s production of Snow White at the Minetta Lane Theatre inspired by the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale that we all grew up knowing – is being sold as an adult version of the folk tale, reflected…
EMMA MEAD by Julia Polinsky Once the Hollywood machine gets hold of something like the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson, or, in this case, the Oz books, it’s easy for us to forget how dark children’s stories are. How they come from spaces of loss and fear. Tales of orphaned or abandoned…
Jeffrey C. Wolf photos by Matthew Dunivan By Marc Miller Back in ancient history, when there were just three networks, everybody got their news from middle-of-the-road Huntley-Brinkley or Walter Cronkite or Harry Reasoner, and extremism was less extreme. Now political zealots dwell within their bubbles of Fox News or MSNBC, and the…
By Julia Polinsky Director Sean Daniels has paced I and You is if it were dishing out social-media instant information, and the two actors who play the high school students blitz through their dialogue at warp speed. That speed may be appropriate for teenagers, but it serves the story badly. All the clues are…
A Review by Deirdre Donovan Teaser: Kecia Lewis resurrects Brecht’s iconic character with gutsiness and daring at the Classic Stage Company. “Still tough as nails, I see; but that’s what I like about you.” The Cook’s words to Mother Courage in a late scene in Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children might well apply…