The performances are quite stellar. Jayne Atkinson’s Helen is simply gorgeous. We do see that woman who 30 years ago wore a red dress to a party…and that was enough for Mark and Lorraine…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 01:34PMPlaywright Kairos Looney has given us a gift in these painfully beautiful moments. We explore a family’s various ways of approaching love for and duty to each other with the result that we…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:02PMSarah Benson’s direction is spot-on, but we find ourselves wishing the closing scene was more than just a plethora of bloody penises. This is where the creatives needed to say, “Okay, th…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:54PMEnter young baritone Edwin Joseph. He has that dark curly hair and handsome face, yes, and the crucial understanding of the necessary swagger and selfishness that carries this character thro…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 07:28PMThe text created by Bogart in collaboration with Maddow and Zimet is a collage of assembled passages from the works of Sartre and de Beauvoir, amongst others. Maddow and Zimet don’t often …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:05PMIt is a rare author indeed that can take uncomfortable material, and by uncomfortable that is, to hear, digest, and process a subject no one likes as a subject of conversation, and then give…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:56AMWhile we are presented with characters who are doing a noble thing and can be touched by what they go through to accomplish their task, Brian Belding’s book and lyrics repeatedly take us o…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:27PMJes succeeds where some other bio-storytellers fail. Jes’ secret is being comfortable in their own skin to relate intensely personal experiences yet create a sense of universality, or comm…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:08AMProbably only David Rabe’s "Sticks and Bones" (part of his Vietnam trilogy that included "The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel" and "Streamers") is as demonstrative as "Lone Star" in its dep…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:04PMThere are frequent breaks in thought such as “I forgot to mention at the top that I will be injecting my jokes with a bit of humor tonight as a way to keep them both engaging and fun.” T…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 08:56PMTatarsky uses language in a fresh way, ultimately giving the sensation of having created her own. There are so many thoughts overlapping, and there are accompanying unintelligible sounds and…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:52PMNot since Stephen Sondheim’s "Sunday in the Park with George" have “civilians” gotten so close to the creative individual’s “process” when attending a theater piece. David Adjmi�…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:25PMIf an audience can willingly get past the contrivance that the distant relative Stevie meets over coffee, a young white man whose family generations ago once owned (and fathered!) slaves in …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 05:54PMNathan Alan Davis’ "The Refuge Plays," if one pays attention, is exactly about refuge: growing up with it (because someone else has lovingly created it for you), seeking it (if you feel yo…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:13PMTo say that Krymov works like no other director is an understatement not to be taken lightly. He is known for his inventive Russian adaptations, but he has also been earning a reputation for…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:48AMnicHi douglas’ vision is one of evocative beauty, one that gives us stage pictures to treasure for some time. The seated women fanning themselves with beautiful white fans as they watch on…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:24AMLaBanca’s performance in his own play defies superlatives. Including us in his choir at the beginning of the show says it all. We are relieved that he still finds joy in teaching. As he pu…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:43PMKrymov’s production is a rapturous love letter to the making of theater. He unearths how we really tell our stories by our emotions, what we hide, as much as what we reveal. He uses his st…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:06PMSweitzer inhabits over a dozen characters in this play entitled "20 Seconds: A Play with Music," albeit two of them are him when young and him telling us the story now…two people he knows …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 02:44PMSomewhere there are rules for what theatre is supposed to do: it should entertain, it should instruct, it should provoke. To say that Annie Dorsen’s "Prometheus Firebringer" checks all the…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 02:26PMDirector Rick Hamilton effectively steers the sad tale away from an endless maudlin saga. After all, the “spoiler” is in the program. Helena Weinrauch is alive and well and in her late 9…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:22AMPlaywright Samantha Hurley does beautiful justice to the life and times (and the inner workings of the mind) of this early teen with not a lot going on but for her own fantasy world and self…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 07:29PMCaswell’s dialogue for and wry observation of a family this dysfunctional is quite compelling. Scenes where two of the siblings verbally gang up on the third are fraught with humor as much…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 01:35PMWhile the painstaking entry upon entry yearn to be something of import, we can’t help but feel it takes a certain steadfastness and desperate commitment to make the banal seem so extraordi…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:15AMAnd the production is loaded with action. Except for the tender love scenes, the play moves at almost breakneck speed. Where most modern productions of Shakespeare tend toward languor, this …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 01:18PMFrom the moment he walks out with a stuffed “Disneyfied” dragon to tell us a fairy tale his mother told him when he was little, we are enraptured by Pinky, an 11-year-old Chinese boy gro…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 01:15PMHeartbeat Opera seems to have found the way to separate themselves from the rest of the pack of alternative opera companies here in New York. Their way is to inject the standard repertory of…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 12:31PMJust when you think you’ve seen an opera so many times you can’t imagine it being told anew along comes Heartbeat Opera with a riveting take on Puccini’s "Tosca." Director Shadi G. …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 12:15PMBossert directs his own work here, thereby unfortunately removing any crucial distance from the material. Where the story of the play and the relationships we see are engaging, the play-wi…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 01:48PMFor the audience, there is an ease of losing sight of the fact that what we are watching is a piece of theatre. Campbell is direct and warm and instructing and sensitive in this piece that h…
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 07:39PMComposer/librettists O-Lan Jones and Emmett Tinley have created what they refer to as “a re-Creation Myth” in this fascinating interdisciplinary opera theater work entitled "Iceland." …
SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 05:16PM