Reviews Archives

  • Good Time Charlie

    Ryan Haddad, known for writing solo memoirs as plays, has expanded his theatrical landscape to include his own family. In this case, he offers a tribute to his gay uncle in Good Time Charlie, now off-Broadway at the Public Theater. This is a loving portrait of Charlie, a man forced by time, parents and circumstance…

  • Kramer/Fauci

    Daniel Fish directed this, so I’d expect to hate it. But Kramer/Fauci, at St. Ann’s Warehouse, turns out to be a bracing staging of a notable hour of broadcast history. The Fish eccentricities do accumulate, but they’re less baffling than usual, and even, in one large instance, justifiable. That hour happened on CSPAN, on Nov….

  • Burning Leaves

    Should a teacher serve as an inspiration for a student’s life outside the classroom? Or are there boundaries? TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence) NYC’s oldest and longest continuously producing LGBTQIA+ theater company, continues to honor its mission with its latest show, Burning Leaves, by Tom Rowan. The production combines humor, honesty, and compassion to…

  • Human Things

    Human Things, a new play from Joshua Owen now at the West End Theatre, leaves us with questions. Not necessarily the ones the author intended. The story follows a young couple, Margaret (Rebecca Robles) and Greg (Ben Rosenfield), who have been isolated on a remote South Pacific island for a couple of years. There is…

  • Lean-To

    Now playing at 59E59, Stephen Sheffer’s Lean-To, a difficult-but-somewhat-charming exploration of interpersonal relationships masquerading as a comedy, blows up fairly spectacularly, and you see it coming. If it were harder to care about the characters, if they were less likable, if your compassion weren’t evoked, it would be harder to be ticked off at the…

  • In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat

    The profoundly felt connection between Neo-Expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and actor, director, and writer Roger Guenveur Smith is the basis of the outstanding solo show  In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Created and performed by the multi-award-winning Smith, it’s now playing a limited engagement at New York Theatre Workshop, where it had a critically acclaimed sold-out run in…

  • Our Sinatra

    In 1999, the musical revue Our Sinatra, conceived, created, and performed by Eric Comstock, Christopher Gines, and Hilary Kole, made its debut at the Algonquin Hotel’s historic Oak Room. It transferred to Off-Broadway, has played two national tours, numerous regional runs, and many nightclub engagements. The popular show has now returned to the NYC stage with a…

  • Paranormal Activity

    With the opening of Paranormal Activity, horror is alive and well on Broadway, which is saying something, considering the genre usually has a pretty high mortality rate. After its highly praised runs in Los Angeles, Chicago, London, and Toronto, Paranormal Activity is attempting to bring its beloved movie franchise to the Great White Way with…