Off-Broadway Archives

  • Invisible Thread

    Griffin Matthews and Michael Luwoye                                   photo by Joan Marcus.                            By Julia Polinsky Lots of youthful earnestness, needing some work. But in Invisible Thread, with saturated colors, vibrant movement, and heart-tugging sentiment, as the first-act anthem says, they put it all on the line. Griffin Matthews opens Invisible Thread by telling us, up…

  • Tim and Scrooge

    l to r: Justin Scott Brown (as Tim) George Lee Andrews (as Scrooge)         Photos by John Vecchiolla                                                            by Ed Lieberman In the vein of the current mania for prequels and sequels, Tim and Scrooge picks up the story of Charles Dickens’ beloved A Christmas Carol twelve years later. Scrooge, after his transformation from miser…

  • Rose

    Kathleen Chalfant plays Rose Kennedy                Photo credit: Carol Rosegg)                                         by Deirdre Donovan Laurence Leamer’s Rose , a new one-woman bio-drama about the Kennedy matriarch, is a theatrical confection. And, with the excellent Kathleen Chalfant inhabiting Rose, we learn how the grande dame managed to brave the political winds and personal tragedies of…

  • Steve

    Malcolm Gets, Jerry Dixon, Mario Cantone, Matt McGrath   Photo by Monique Carboni.                                                            By David Schultz Jazzy Show Biz riff on middle aged gay New Yorkers settling down, and raising children.             Coincidence or fate has transpired to give New York theatergoer’s two separate plays that cover the identical emotional territory onstage. This variation on…

  • Dear Elizabeth

    Cherry Jones and television actor David Aaron Baker            photos by Joan Marcus                             By Julia Polinsky At the beginning of Dear Elizabeth, Sarah Ruhl’s play inspired by the correspondence between poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, two people, sitting at separate desks, read, in pools of light. A Stage Manager (Peggy Noonan) sometimes comments,…

  • Incident at Vichy

    Darren Pettie, Jonathan Hadary, Derek Smith, James Carpinello and Jonny Orsini                                   by Eugene Paul In this occasion of Arthur Miller’s celebratory 2015 season—100 years since his birth – Miller plays are in evidence all around town in a range from his stunning Off Broadway Yiddish production of Death of a Salesman to his…

  • Dada Woof Papa Hot

    John Benjamin Hickey and Patrick Breen                                           By David Schultz When a play seeks to uncover a specific demographic while trying to be all-inclusive to everyone it can be difficult to pull off successfully. Playwright Peter Parnell expertly sets up a classic scenario on the travails of gay parenthood. The reality of gay men accessible…

  • The TuTu Trilogy

    Kimberly Jenna Simon                                                        photos by Miro Magloire                              By R. Pikser The TuTu Trilogy is composed of three vignettes, each of which takes place in a backstage situation; two are in a rented rehearsal studio, one backstage after a performance.  Author Richard Curtis is not so much exploring his situations as he is commenting…

  • Ripcord

                                                By Eugene Paul If you’re going to find yourself in a nursing home – oops – an adult living facility, who wouldn’t want to take over the whole, pleasant space we see if all you had to do was make yourself poisonous to anyone designated to share those desirable quarters in upscale…