Off-Broadway Plays Archives

  • Wiesenthal

    Tom Dugan in Wiesenthal.  Photo credit: Carol Rosegg.                                             By Eugene Paul He keeps a mug at the water cooler and another one on his desk, the other end of the long, disheveled office, and another sort of half way between on a shelf of the stuffed book cases covering the office wall. He’s always sipping at…

  • Indian Ink

    Rosemary Harris and Bhavesh Patel                        photos by Joan Marcus                                           By Gene Paul Set designer Neil Patel’s elaborate Indian frame around the entire proscenium captures a certain exotic aura which enhances the tranquil,  pale blue  house – or is it a hotel? – within, its intricately arched windows saying this is India, 1930.  A travel…

  • Secondary Pitch

    Phoebe Leonard, Larry Phillips, Peter Buck Dettman, Ryan Dusek                                                           by Eugene Paul Stephen Dowd, yes, THE famous Stephen Dowd, has just finished hanging his famous #28 shirt, expensively framed,  on the wall of the shitty little apartment he is sharing with his two brothers, Paul the Grouch and Kevin the idiot. After all, he…

  • Six Passionate Women

                                                            by Deirdre Donovan Years before Mario Fratti and Maury Yeston’s collaborated on the Broadway musical Nine, Fratti had already done its theatrical spadework with his Six Passionate Women, written in 1977.  Like Nine, this earlier venture is a thinly-veiled study of Italian film maker Federico Fellini.  And though it doesn’t have the gorgeous music…

  • L.A. Unified

    David Newer                                     photos by Lisa Silberman.                                               by Deirdre Donovan  An actor turned substitute teacher makes the grade with his new autobiographical solo show at the 2014 Unified Solo Theatre Festival. The 2014 United Solo Theatre Festival turns five this fall and has over 130 productions criss-crossing the boards at Theater Row (September 18 through November…

  • Next to Normal

    Benjamin Sheff and Carman Napier in Next to Normal (photo by Bella Muccari)                                                             by Eric Grunin If you saw Alice Ripley give the performance of a lifetime in Next to Normal, you might wonder if the tremendous impact of the show wasn’t perhaps dependent on having such a force of nature for its power….

  • Gertrude – The Cry

    David Barlow as Hamlet and Robert Emmet Lunney as Claudius                                                      by Eugene Paul If you haven’t heard of Howard Barker, the playwright of Gertrude: The Cry, don’t fash yourself; millions in Great Britain, his home territory, are in the same condition of ignorance.  However, if you were to mention his name in artistic circles…

  • Pentecost

    Lily Balsen as Fatima, Jonathan Tindle as Oliver Davenport                         by Eugene Paul   Alex Draper as Leo Katz, Tosca Giustini as Gabriella Pecs, Jonathan Tindle as Oliver Davenport  Young, mysteriously excited Gabriella Pecs, (Tosca Giustini) has led worldly art historian Oliver Davenport (Jonathan Tindle) to an ancient ruin of a Romanesque church, begging him…

  • Abe Abraham

    Photos by Jaqi Medlock.                            By R. Pikser Jack’s, the performance space in re-gentrifying Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill, looks like it was once a garage.  The tin-foil covered walls of the one room provide an intimate space for young performers to learn their craft, and the price is doable for the equally young audience members.  This…

  • King Lear

    John Lithgow                 photos by Joan Marcus                                                   by Eugene Paul After forty-one years, the Public Theater has brought a new production of King Lear to the Delacorte, crystal clear in its exposition, sweeping in its physical scope, aggravatingly complex as ever in it character development of Lear, ham handed in its painting of villains, and…