One of many offerings at the inaugural Broadway Bound Festival is a slice of life drama about a couple engaged to be married who are physically injured in a violent anti-gay attack and broken by the emotional torment that contaminates their relationship. It is refreshing to see an LGBTQ play that is not sugar coated, melodramatic, or steeped in sorrow….
There have been several media depicting the life of the famed piano virtuoso Liberace; including, novels, documentaries, film, television, interviews and now, following the attempted effort of the stage musical “All That Glitters,” comes “Ben, Virginia and Me: The Liberace Musical” currently running as part of the NYMF Festival. This endeavor concentrates mainly on the relationship between the celebrated showman,…
The path to peace (if not successful), the pursuit of peace and serenity, is littered with an abundance of hurdles and pitfalls, some only causing minor contusions, others resulting in disaster. Dad (Terrence Montgomery) an alcoholic farmer somewhere in the Midwest has apparently been on a life-long quest for a surcease of discord and disharmony. His marriage to Mom (Susan…
“MotherFreakingHood! (Maternal Discretion Advised),” currently finishing its run at the New York Musical Festival at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, celebrates “the mother you never thought you should be.” Apparently a riff on the sacred status of motherhood, the musical joins the ranks of movies that try to extol the virtues of the role by suggesting what it ought not…
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. The first Freedom Ride…
The Authors’ Note in the program for “Georama: An American Panorama on 3 Miles of Canvas,” currently running at the New York Musical Festival at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, claims that John Banvard the subject of their musical “[has] been entirely obliterated by history.” Although that premise is not entirely accurate – articles about Banvard exist in numerous scholarly…
The sixty-minute one act play “Saving Stan” is being presented as part of the inaugural season of the Broadway Bound Theater Festival at 14th Street Y Theater. Playwright Gary Morgenstein has penned a story with an interesting premise; however, at present the script is slightly scattered and confusing. Stan (Carlo Fiorletta) has suffered a severe stroke which leaves him incapacitated,…
Corina’s (Cristy Reynoso) dream is to reach New York City and start a new life. This American Dream begins in Guatemala and reaches a climax in Tucson, Arizona where the twenty-two-year-old illegal immigrant is being held in a “safe house” by her “coyotaje” Efren (Juan Ramirez, Jr.), the human smuggler who has illegally transported Corina from her crossing point into…
Several characters appear in “In A Room, Waiting,” particularly because the room in question is a hospital waiting room. These “visitors” have little else to occupy their time other than browsing outdated magazines or entering a conversation that might either ease their apprehension or perhaps escalate their level of anxiety. Malcolm (Thaddeus McCants) and Aisha (Jarielle Whitney), a young unmarried…
The members of the Gordon family have secrets they hope will never be disclosed, embarrassing facts or simply undisclosed facts that, if revealed, might have a detrimental impact on how they are perceived by other family members or by the community at large. These “skeletons in the closet” can be kept at bay and remain hidden knowingly – consciously –…