One has to wonder what propels an artist to pursue one idea at the expense of another, a question you may find yourself asking if you see the play Selection Day, currently being performed by a game cast at Theatre 54 at Shetler Studios in Midtown. The playwright, Paul Buzinski, whose previous works include Madrid […]
Quite unusually, I was handed an audiobook before sitting down to watch this show—I believe it was an audiobook of the show, or it may have been one of Sons and Lovers or The Rainbow which Phoenix Rising’s Paul Slack has found success in narrating. Regardless, it gives gives clues as to quality of the […]
Before the show even started, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins immediately won me over. I was at the BCA, ready to watch a performance of appropriate, the New England premiere of the play and a SpeakEasy Stage Company production directed by M. Bevin O’Gara. In the program notes, Jacobs-Jenkins pointed out how revealing laughter can be as […]
The Sweethearts is a show not to be missed. Telling the story of a girl band going to give a charity concert to British troops in Afghanistan in 2014, it promises a night filled with emotions from humor to sadness, and it forces the audience to question both individual and societal values. The Raise Dark […]
Like A Generation is Coyote Collective’s re-mount of an earlier production from 2013 with an updated multi-media set and lighting design. Written by Max Tepper, and directed by Blue Bigwood-Mallen, the show is a show “about television (or I suppose streaming since no one actually watches TVanymore,” Bigwood-Mallen writes in the show programme. And indeed […]
Despite the vast number of diverse theatre productions in New York City, there is a noticeable lack of plays that depict the lives of Americans living in the middle of the country. Susan Merson’s new musical play Between Pretty Places does just that in a surprisingly genuine way while also exploring themes of grief and […]
Two moderate highpoints of the 2015 Stratford season, Possible Worlds & The Physicists are both works of thematic ambition with refreshing visual flair. Strong casts and well-paced direction help both pieces stand out though neither stirs the heart nearly as much as it attempts to challenge the mind. In John Mighton’s Possible Worlds, a […]
Thank god for Kate Hennig. In a Stratford season where women are both underrepresented and terribly misused, she’s offered us a heroine ten times as complex as Pericles and two of the most compelling supporting female characters of the season to boot. In a season of dull period pieces and literal interpretation, she’s bent history […]