Off-Broadway Plays Archives

  • Later Life

    Barbara Garrick and Laurence Lau                               By Ron Cohen “The world I came from. It was a totally different culture,” declares the Boston banker Austin toward the end of A.R. Gurney’s Later Life. “All those…surrogates…breathing down your neck. Nurses. Cooks. Maids. Gardeners. Aunts and uncles. Parents, too, of course. And Godparents. Grandparents. Great-grandparents, for…

  • The Outsider

    Burke Moses (Arthur Vance) and Lenny Wolpe (Ned Newley) Photos by Matthew Murphy By David Schultz If you are currently feeling burnt out with the political insanity and circus that seems to be unraveling daily before our eyes…. turn off the cable news stations, at least for two and a half hours and sit through…

  • Labute New Theater Festival

    Chauncy Thomas and Spencer Sickmann               photos by Carol Rosegg                      By Eugene Paul This is a heads-up: the St. Louis Actors’ Studio is presenting  one of the best evenings in New York, three smashing one act plays consummately acted;  you might have trouble getting tickets because it’s a short run in 59E59’s smallest theater, so be advised. Provocateur…

  • Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

    Robert Fairchild                        photo credit: Shirin Tinati       by Arney Rosenblat An ambitious, visually beautiful attempt to transport an audience to another time and place. The Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein production reflects the Ensemble for the Romantic Century’s executive artistic director Eve Wolf’s creative goal “to bring historical figures and works to the stage with…

  • Shadowlands

    Daniel Gerroll and Robin Abramson   Shadowlands    By Eugene Paul     Playwright William Nicholson’s winningly romantic depiction of the love between lionized literary light C.S. Lewis and brave, brilliant poet Joy Gresham is being given a movingly  enlightened revival in director Christa Scott-Reed’s keenly observed production, thanks to wonderful performances, particularly by Daniel…

  • De Novo

       Manny Urena and cast                                         Photo credit Russ Rowland                         by Deirdre Donovan True story of a Guatemalan teen in the immigration courts in the United States. Thanks to Jefffrey Solomon’s new docudrama De Novo, theatergoers can now get an insider’s look at what really happens in the immigration courts in the United…

  • Sleep

    Jihae Park                  Photo Credit:Max Gordon                      by  R. Pikser This theatrical adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story, “Sleep,” is a work of much collaboration:   The adaptation is by Naomi Iizuka; The direction, as important as the acting, is by Ripe Time, a group that develops and presents new ensemble-based performance works, and its artistic director…

  • Hot Mess

    Lucy DeVito, Paul Molnar, Max Crumm              photos by Jeremy Daniel                                 By Ron Cohen For a play that seems compelled to spew lots of graphic sex talk, Hot Mess also dispenses a lot of charm. The script concerns the romance between Elanor, a female standup comic in Los Angeles, and Max, a one-time comic…

  • Pride and Prejudice

    Kate Hamill and Jason O’Connell                photos by James Leynse                          by Julia Polinsky It’s easy to go back and forth between liking Primary Stages’ production of Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice and absolutely loathing it. If you can take or leave the Austen novel, you may like this show better than if you…

  • The Mad Ones

    Krystina Alabado          Photos by Richard Termine                 By Eugene Paul Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk , pop music theater writing team for fifteen years – they did the book, music and lyrics for The Mad Ones – don’t give up.  When, several years ago The Mad Ones, then known as The Unauthorized Autobiography of…