Anwar Ragep

When something about a play doesn’t work, and perhaps more importantly – its run time exceeds 2.5 hours – one’s thoughts naturally tend towards the existential. What does it all mean? Why am I here? Loose Ends unfortunately struggles to be relevant to modern playgoers as its message has been muddled in the almost 40 […]

  Anwar Ragep

The Summoning, by Charlotte Ahlin, is an ambitious slapstick three-person play with comedic moments that never quite becomes more than the sum of its parts. From the moment I sat in my seat and saw a giant pentagram chalked on the stage floor, I really wanted to like this play. As a fan of science […]

  Anwar Ragep

Lawrence Dial’s latest play, DANNYKRISDONNAVERONICA should come with a warning: If you are contemplating having children, spending 90 minutes…

  Anwar Ragep

In the Room, a new play at showing at Alchemical Theater Laboratory, written by Lawrence Dial and directed by Adam Knight, aims to expose the uncomfortable and unresolved. This play takes place over several successive weeks of a writing workshop for aspiring playwrights. As the weeks progress, the six aspiring writers and their teacher reveal […]

  Anwar Ragep

Maggie’s Little Theater, a community theater located in Queens, NY, is in its ninth season at St. Margaret Parish Hall. It presents two musical productions a year, and educates participants in all aspects of stage production. This year, it presented the classic Guys and Dolls, a musical about the affable gambler Nathan Detroit (Alan Perkins) […]

  Anwar Ragep

Heraclitus famously opined that you can never step in the same river twice. If he spent more time attending theater than stepping into rivers, he may have said you can never attend the same improv show twice. On the Spot, an improvisational performance at the Broadway Comedy Club, produced by Nathan Armstrong and directed by […]

  Anwar Ragep

In an election year that has redefined crazy, at least the stage provides some refuge from politics. Well, at least until I found out I was seeing Primary. Et tu, theater? Et tu? Primary, written by Gracie Gardner and directed by Alex Keegan, won the annual Project Playwright Competition, where scenes from a handful of […]

Part of the mission statement for the Seventeenth Annual Midtown International Theatre Festival is to “offer a safe environment to develop innovative theatre.” Held at the WorkShop Theater’s Main Stage and Jewel Box Theaters, the festival featured over thirty performances. The productions are typically about a half hour, and many even shorter than that, which […]