Monday, May 11, 2015
Perhaps a week after visiting Berlin was the wrong time to see a "new" American musical set in post-war Europe. I had just been served a healthy dose of post-war European history from …
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 05:29PMTuesday, May 5, 2015
Where do addicts, hookers, strippers, and fuck ups end up? In New Orleans, apparently the answer is the Hummingbird Motel on Airline Highway. A crumbling rundown motel that like all its de…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 03:03PMSunday, April 19, 2015
As furniture disappeared into dark chasms and gaping holes remained on stage, I felt a deep sense of anguish. This re-staging of Fun Home on Broadway had cracked the story open for me …
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 07:04PMTuesday, April 14, 2015
The voice in the headphones, Heather, tells us to have a dance party and shake our booty. In the midst of Nolita I'm disco dancing to a terrible disco track. Public dancing is no…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 09:50AMSunday, April 12, 2015
Photo by Carol RoseggAs the room shakes and the light fixture swings like a pendulum, experiencing an earthquake in Fukushima makes the anxiety of living in the nuclear age quite acute. …
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 10:57PMSufjan Stevens wiped tears from his eyes as he moved his way through song after song about his mother and her death. His show at the Beacon Theatre this week corresponded with his recent&n…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 09:17PMTuesday, April 7, 2015
Max Baker's play Live from the Surface of the Moon fumbles its way through feminism and sexism on the cusp of 1970. What could have been an interesting window into the relationships be…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 08:35PM"Double suicide and reanimation creates a bond that is tough to break."--JulietMelody Bates's play R&J&Z (Romeo & Juliet & Zombies) starts from where Shakespeare left off. As…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 12:30PMFriday, April 3, 2015
As I watched David Greenspan's dreamy memory play about gay identity through the years, a film actress from days of yore, and the challenges of ever really knowing anything from the past, I …
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 10:13PMLaura Eason (Sex with Strangers) writes lively and vibrant characters and I always want to spend more time with them. She has assembled an array of characters with quirks and passions in T…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 04:47PMSaturday, March 28, 2015
Giving a stage this large over to flex dancers at the Park Avenue Armory feels like a radical act. The scale and context of the production of FLEXN can't be ignored. We're in a storied build…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 11:38AMTuesday, March 24, 2015
Photo credit: Ben Arons"I must admit to you now. I have no plan."There's something about a heavy rain that makes you think maybe it will wash away all the pain. But the poetry of rain …
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 04:46PMSaturday, February 28, 2015
I started writing this months ago...but never got around to finishing it. But it keeps coming up in conversations I have so I'm posting it now for posterity. It's a bit of messy…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 12:25PMI popped into the Tate Modern to kill some time while a friend had a meeting and blindly wandered into the Conflict, Time, Photography exhibit. And I'm glad I did. It's a moving,…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 11:41AMTuesday, February 17, 2015
When the young Revolutionary War upstarts in a tavern shout "Showtime" and burst into rap, it's a massive collapsing of history and culture and says those rowdy upstarts who dance through …
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 01:05PMMonday, February 16, 2015
The musical Brooklynite breaks the superhero mold — Composer Peter Lerman was working on a movie with director Michael Mayer when Mayer offered him an unexpected opportunity. Would Ler…
SOURCE: TDF at 09:00AMMonday, February 9, 2015
The last thing I thought I would feel at Pretty Filthy, the Civilians's new musical about the porn industry, was kinship. As a newbie to the world of internet content, I wanted to ra…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 03:30PMFriday, January 30, 2015
With the exactitude and agony of flaying skin off of another human, Winners and Losers goes to work on the layers of humanity, painfully peeling back privilege, class, education, experienc…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 10:49PMSaturday, January 24, 2015
I once met a man who just kept saying the word "wackadoo." This thought popped into my mind as I was watching Kate Benson's colorful, kooky, and truly wackadoo play A Beautiful Day in …
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 12:30PMThursday, January 22, 2015
"Your family's the only place where time is dense...where age is compressed." Photo by Hunter CanningA family keeping secrets is not new territory in the theater but Brian Watkins's Wyoming…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 09:56AMSunday, January 18, 2015
Andrew Schneider's show YOUARENOWHERE has closed but we hope it gets a second life in New York. I've also maybe promised most of the United Kingdom that it would probably tour there ev…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 11:14PMThursday, January 15, 2015
The rest of the critics are going to talk about Honeymoon in Vegas as a classic boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-tries-to-get-girl-back story. They'll rightly celebrate the efferves…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 11:15PMWednesday, January 14, 2015
"Time really does just go away."Early on in YOUARENOWHERE I was mad that it was going to end. It had hardly begun and already I was lamenting that at some point I would have to leave this d…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 11:33PMTuesday, January 13, 2015
"Two remarkable eyes. We stared into each other's eyes without moving."There's something incredibly liberating about durational installation work. Rather than the tight focus required…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 11:41AMSaturday, January 10, 2015
The APAP conference has put together some dynamic and diverse panels showcasing artists who are breaking down barriers, working across genres, and using art to bring the world together.&nb…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 11:08PMYou may be wondering why suddenly in January you start hearing about all sorts of small theater festivals around New York City. The reason these festivals exist is because of the Ass…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 10:06PMSunday, January 4, 2015
The black lake is so inviting. Filling the entirety of the Park Avenue Armory's drill hall with a slick black pool of water, with two pianos in the middle, Douglas Gordan's insta…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 07:46PMTuesday, December 30, 2014
Limited edition Churlish Meg originalSomewhere between Bedford-Nostrand and Flushing Avenue I'm crying. It's the G train so literally no one cares. A girl cries on the G train every twenty…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 12:13AMMonday, December 29, 2014
I enjoyed another year of UK theater-going. I saw almost 50 shows out of the country. From what I saw, these were my favorites: 1. A View From the Bridge (Young Vic):…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 03:36PMYear-end self-reflection is a bitch. Looking over my theatrical year I saw a lot of high-profile works that did not quite live up to their potential and discovered some new artists I had not…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 11:13AM"I'm really terrible at being a person."Samuel Hunter again manages to find that painful spot in your heart where longing, grief, love, and disappointment lie and reveals it ever so gently t…
SOURCE: Mildly Bitter's Musings at 11:13AM 
