The Unknown, now in performances at Studio Seaview, is an 80-minute monologue, a one-act psychological thriller written with Sean Hayes in mind. The plot is loosely based on an experience of playwright David Cale thirty years ago. It follows Elliot, a lonely, single, gay playwright struggling with writer’s block. He goes to a friend’s remote…
The scene is an empty, nondescript room, with fluorescent lighting and a pile of random items (painting, furniture). It could be anywhere (someone’s basement, a room in an office building, a school?). One by one, a number of women enter, apparently preparing for a meeting of some kind. First to arrive is Jane (April Matthis),…
The premise of the off-Broadway musical Just Desserts: A Musical Bake-Off is simple: somewhere in the Midwest, there is a bake-off at the Jefferson County fair. The top bakers have been narrowed to five, a cross-section of townies: haughty reigning champ Mildred, self-effacing school nurse Jean, ambitious Emma, bubbly twice-divorced Brandy, and Brooklyn transplant Lou….
Remember back in school when you were told to stand up in front of your peers and read from a textbook? Now imagine raising the stakes: not simply reading what’s in front of you, but spelling a word out loud, letter by letter, with nothing to rely on but memory, instinct, and nerve. Suddenly, every…
Richard Chang’s Ai Yah Goy Vey!, now at A.R.T./New York Theatres, is this winter’s offering from the Pan Asian Repertory. Subtitled “Adventures of a Dim Sun in Search of His Wanton Father,” the play’s junior-high level of punning humor thus shows up before things even get started. Start they do, as Chang rides into the…
There is a price to pay when you speak truth to power. And none more horrible than the fate of Hans Litten, a lawyer who called Adolf Hitler to the witness stand in 1931 to prove his credo of political violence. The case, the Eden Dance Palace trial, involved four Nazi storm troopers who claimed…
Tracy Letts’ bullet train of a play, Bug, has moved to Broadway from a more modest run in its 2004 Off-Broadway debut. Twenty years ago, this intense play was both insanely entertaining and extremely disturbing; playing in a small, intimate house back then, it was claustrophobic and eerie. Now presented in a much larger venue,…
Here’s a run-don’t-walk moment: if you’re ready to warm up this deep-chill winter, go see The Porch on Windy Hill, the “new play with old music” written by Sherry Stregack Lutken, Lisa Helmi Johanson, Morgan Morse, and David M. Lutken. Lutken and Morse also star, along with Tora Nogami Alexander, in this heartfelt play about…
With An Ark, The Shed and Tin Drum unveil the world premiere of what they describe as the first play created for and in mixed reality, a work that replaces physical presence with one-to-one digital intimacy. Written by Simon Stephens, directed by Sarah Frankcom, and starring Ian McKellen alongside Golda Rosheuvel, Arinzé Kene, and Rosie…
In Blackout Songs, the Olivier-nominated play by Joe White running at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space, a young man and young woman meet at what’s clearly meant to be an AA meeting. Church-y looking basement, coffee setup, stacked chairs, you know the look. Yet they never get to the meeting, and the Kaleidoscopic…