Kyle Taylor Parker, Dwayne Cooper, John Edwards and Jelani Remy. Photo: Gary Ng Is It OK to enjoy a musical without a message? Yes!!! By Jeanne Lieberman Imagine you are home alone back in the 50’s or 60’s, your parents have gone out, you turn the radio to your favorite rock ‘n roll station…
Joshua Balan and Ruthellen Cheney (Photo: Ted Alcorn) Twelfth Night By Fern Siegel To keep Shakespeare fresh for 21st-century audiences, directors often set the plays in new locales. Whether Shakespeare’s works are grounded in a Nazi-like England (Richard Loncraine’s Richard III) or a prison (Edward Hall’s The Merchant of Venice), it clicks with…
by Julia Polinsky Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope would be a pleasure even if all you got was a terrific retro revue of marvelous songs and electrifying singing and dancing. But you get more; you get vignettes of African-American people’s lives, stories told without a word spoken. Evenly matched with their own…
By David Schultz Actress Renee Taylor has brought back her one-woman show to her hometown. My Life on a Diet is based on her 1986 memoir about her endless trek through all manner of strange, quirky diet fads. Intermingled with her diet tips, an entire lifetime of struggling with her weight issues, her reminiscences…
Adam Milano (MAN) Marianne Tatum (Bookseller) By Dierdre Donovan Who said New York theater snoozes during the summer months? With the Potomac Theatre Project/NYC returning to the Atlantic Theatre Company for its 32nd season with three provocative works–George Tabori’s Brecht on Brecht, a quartet from Howard Barker’s Possibilities, and Caryl Churchill’s BBC…
Allen Lewis Rickman Tevye Served Raw, Garnished with Jews From the writings of Sholem Aleichem by Julia Polinsky Shane Baker, Allen Lewis Rickman, and Yelena Shmulenson have lovingly crafted Tevye Served Raw, Garnished with Jews, an homage to Sholem Aleichem+. He wrote the stories that were the basis for Fiddler on the Roof,…
God Bless America: The Music of Irving Berlin A Review by Deirdre Donovan Impresario Scott Siegel returns to Feinstein’s/54 Below with an homage to the great American songwriter who had a talent for giving the American people what they wanted. The celebration of Independence Day didn’t end with the Macy’s Day fireworks display over the…
Eli Gelb, Idina Menzel and Will Brittain (Joan Marcus) By David Schultz Playwright Joshua Harmon (Bad Jews, Significant Others, Admissions) offers a tantalizing idea for a play. The bare bones outline is given at the outset. There are actually few surprises in store, but the impeccable cast with assured direction by Daniel Aukin makes…
Stephen Rea and Chris Corrigan. Photo: Ros Kavanagh By Fern Siegel Identity is a loaded word, especially as politics shift. In Northern Ireland, that seismic turn, explored in David Ireland’s subversive-absurdist play Cyprus Avenue, becomes a fiery cauldron of emotions that fuels the unthinkable. There is fierceness to paranoia and prejudice…
Melissa Errico photos by Carol Rosegg By Eugene Paul Some years ago, a mysteriously wise lady of serious years told me that most assuredly in another life I had been a Chinese sage of equally mysterious wisdom. After she laid out her evidence I was not about to disagree. Famed lyricist, Alan Jay…