Reviews Archives

  • Dancing Monk Ippen

    A scene from Takaaki Shigenobu’s Dancing Monk Ippen, directed by Hiroaki Doi, at the Sheen Center as part of the 2014 New York International Fringe Festival. By R. Pikser The Dancing Monk Ippen is a modern adaptation of a part of Japanese history from the 13th century, when there was much civil war and killing…

  • Piece Of My Heart

                                            by Eugene Paul You could just tell: they smell it, they taste it, they’re so close…next stop, Broadway! Alexander Dodge’s smashing set is ready, David C. Woolard’s costumes are really Done, the hipped orchestra is ready, Carl Casella’s sound system already reaches all the way to Broadway.  Daniel Goldfarb’s book has its lapses, yes,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Mostly Mozart

    Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra                                                          Photos by: Jennifer Taylor  by Deirdre Donovan  Your playbill might read “Mostly Mozart,” but Beethoven and Haydn had the last word in this August 2nd program.  Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival is one of those New York traditions that no New Yorker should do without.  Not only does it pay homage…

  • The Qualification Of Douglas Evans

    Samantha Strelitz, Nicole Moore, Derek Ahonen, Kelley Swindall                                          photographer Russ Rowland                                     by Eugene Paul The Amoralists are presenting a two play repertory which they say explores “man’s vicious cycles”. The plays, The Qualification of Douglas Evans by Derek Ahonen, and Enter at Forest Lawn by Mark Roberts each feature the play’s author in…

  • Pump Boys and Dinettes

    Cast of Pump Boys and Dinettes photos by Joan Marcus                                                By: Eric Grunin So far this season, the Encores! Off-Broadway project has given us Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick…Boom! and Randy Newman’s Faust. For the final presentation of their second season we have Pump Boys and Dinettes, at once the least ambitious and most fulfilled of…

  • Enter At Forest Lawn

    Sarah Lemp, Mark Roberts, Matthew Pilieci Photos by Russ Rowland                       By Eugene Paul Enter at Forest Lawn, by Mark Roberts, is the second –and shorter but more vitriolic—play in The Gyre, the title that the Amoralists have given to their repertory play voyage of discovery of the vicious cycles we experience. It is hobbled…