On Monday, September 26, 2016, The New York Innovative Theatre Foundation presented their IT Awards. Winners are marked with asterisks.OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE** The Golfer,Gemini CollisionWorks…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:19PMThis is not a review. I saw the first preview of Love, Love, Love, and a review wouldn't be appropriate. However, the show is already in excellent shape, and quite interesting, and completel…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:30PMJames Blossom is a hero--over and over again. He defuses a Nazi nuke miles under the sea and "is given a ticker tape parade and his face on the five dollar bill." He saves the life of the Se…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:13PMSix people assemble for a spiritual retreat with varying levels of comfort and enthusiasm: an ultra-limber, ultra-sexy yoga instructor; a lesbian couple, affectionate but annoyed with each o…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:31PMMy latest Art Times essay is up:The Greek philosopher Heraclitus believed that you can never step into the same river twice because the water is ever-flowing—and also you have ch…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 06:40PMSome friends and I are working our way through past Tony Award shows, and it's been a surprising journey in many ways. This past week, we watched 1970 through 1974. The Tony gestalt has chan…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:16AMMy latest essay is up at Art Times:What accounts for the rise of the intermissionless 90-minute play? A prevalent theory points to the shrinking attention spans of a population inundated 24/…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:48PMIt's almost impossible to discuss James Graham's new play Privacy without saying too much. So here's what I will say:Privacy is a frequently entertaining, sometimes horrifying exam…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:32PMMy latest essay is up at Art Times. Here's a taste.A recent cover of Entertainment Weekly achieved a new low in spoilers. It blared out a big, juicy piece of information about a po…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 12:03AMOur correct predictions are highlighted. Wendy Sandra Cameron Liz Best play: The Humans The Humans The Humans The Humans King Charles III Best musica…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:16AMThe Color Purple has been well-reviewed all over the place, and I generally agree that it is a strong production of a moving show. But I have a serious ax to grind.In Alice Walker's nov…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:37PMStephen Hawking: The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence. A superintelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:04AMThe setting is familiar: a 12-step-program-type support group. A woman stands, says, "Hello, my name is Mica, and I'm Z-positive," and everyone else says, "Hi, Mica." Does "Z-positive" perha…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:19PMSame as it ever was, same as it ever was.Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School For Scandal, first performed in 1777, reveals that humans have changed little over the centuries, clothing a…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:31PMThere's good news, and bad news, and good news again. The good news is that the Master Voices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale) production of Dido and Aeneas was lovely. The bad news is that…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:34PMThe earnest and well-acted Echoes takes place in two times and places: Victorian England and Afghanistan, and present-day England and Syria. In both situations, a young woman has&n…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:22PMFrom Art Times:Once upon a time, boys played the women’s roles in Shakespeare’s plays. Once upon a different time, Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor performed in blackface to great acclaim, and…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:58PMPerhaps the single most salient fact about theater is that it is ephemeral, evanescent. Even if you get to see a production 10 times, it eventually closes, and it's gone. Poof. But in some i…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:48PMThe Pearl Theater's production of Stupid Fucking Bird, Aaron Posner's 21st-century riff/recreation of The Seagull, is well-directed, well-acted, well-designed, and a great deal of fun. …
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:24PMHere's what I liked about Dry Power, Sarah Burgess's predictable, unimaginative, and lame incitement of high finance, currently playing at the Public Theater: the women in the crew wore blac…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 10:15PMPlaywright Hazel Ellis seems to have had a low opinion of women, with an even lower opinion of powerless women stuck together in lives harshly circumscribed by need. Premiering in Ireland in…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:44PMIf you (1) love Stephen Sondheim; (2) adore A Little Night Music; (3) treasure gorgeous singing; and/or (4) value a bargain, get thee to Theatre 2020 in Brooklyn Heights. Running through Mar…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 02:22AMSam Shepard's Buried Child presents the American nightmare. Family is poisonous; religion is useless; ambition is pointless; nothing has been planted in over 30 years. A bizarre, rotted Norm…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 11:08PMThe Encores! presentation of Cabin in the Sky is over, so I'm going to limit this post to three comments:1. I am so glad that musicals have evolved over the years. Cabin in the Sky, whi…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:38PMChris (an unusually subdued James Kautz) wants Amber (the superb Vanessa Vache) to take him back. They've been together on and off since they were teens, and Chris admits that he's messed up…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 04:22PMDr. Seuss, renowned children's author, managed to tuck away some pretty radical thoughts in his accessible, funny, tightly rhymed, and sweetly illustrated books. Seussical, the musical based…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 01:52PMMy latest Art Times essay is up: Every now and then, a controversy breaks out about leaving shows during intermission. Is it fair, acceptable, reasonable, and/or kosher? (rea…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 05:46PMA short time into the future, Queen Elizabeth has died, and Charles is king. Lacking his mother's presence, popularity, and willingness to play the game, he initiates a national crisis by re…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 09:24PMIt's fitting that Marilyn Maye ended her recent show at the Metropolitan Room with "The Secret of Life" followed by "Here's to Life," since she clearly lives by both songs. At 87, she's dyna…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 08:44PMAlthough Ben Brantley's opinion can change the fate of a show, and yours and mine can't, in a deeper sense his is no more valuable than ours. Some of us may bring more experience to the tabl…
SOURCE: Show Showdown at 07:28PMI share Liz Wollman's wonder at the sheer volume of art in this beautiful city of ours. In 2015, I saw 80 shows and there are easily 80 more I wish I had seen. But even with "only" 80 s…
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