145 stories from Mildly Bitter's Musings
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 …
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…
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 …
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…
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. …
Sufjan 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…
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…
"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…
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 …
Laura 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…
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…
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 …
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…
I 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,…
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 …
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…
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…
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 …
"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…
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…
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…
"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…
"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…
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…
You 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…
