“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1 It seems everything in Cori Thomas’s “When January Feels Like Summer” is out of synch, out of time, somehow oddly akilter and often akimbo. The weather is not seasonal. Relationships are not functioning within desired limits. Gender shakes itself out of traditional…
Laryssa Husiak’s “She is King,” currently running at Incubator Arts Project at St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery, is a heartfelt and emotionally compelling tribute to the life and spirit of tennis superstar and innovator Billie Jean King. Ms. Husiak, who also portrays Billie Jean King, provides a sensitive and authentic depiction of the tennis star’s passion for gender equality, the importance of…
It is ironic that by refusing to go to New York City, his last opportunity to escape into freedom, protagonist Tiago (Josue Gutierrez Guerra) is murdered then pushed off a thirty-nine foot sail boat wrapped in sailcloth. He begins his descent into death’s memory vault and launches into his role as unreliable narrator extraordinaire. Tiago’s remarkable and mind-splitting postmortem narrative…
“Luke Nicholas” is the quintessential example of what should be found at the ongoing NY International Fringe Festival. It is good theater, refreshing, new, innovative and well written, always keeping the audience engaged with surprising twists and turns. It examines the parameters of an open gay relationship testing boundaries only to realize what is required to survive the sometimes ugly,…
Friends from childhood, Adam (Topher Rasmussen) and Steve (Logan Tarantino) each need validation from the other as they move forward from graduation and decide where to spend their college years together. Adam needs to know his friend affirms his strong commitment to Mormon values and, after coming out to Adam, Steve needs to know his friend truly understands his sexual…
Cal and Grey (“with an ‘e’”) are two teenage boys considered to be expendable. They were warehoused in their post-infancy by the revolutionary regime whose takeover eliminated “all men and women” and placed all children in orphanages until they were twenty-one. With many other institutionalized children, Cal and Grey survive by adhering to a diet of strict obedience to a…
“Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that…
Billed as an ‘Out-rageous Musical Revue,’ “Boys Will Be Boys” presented at the Studio Theater as part of the ongoing NYMF certainly lives up to its claim. Almost everything from concept, lyrics, characters, parodies and innuendos are completely over the top and as gay as one can possibly imagine. It is a fun romp very reminiscent in style to the…
“Dwight” is an ill-conceived new play about a group of unlikable LGBT friends (well, no one really knows Cash’s precise sexual status) who hang out in Cash’s BIN, recycle, create art from their recycled treasures, and grumble a lot, especially when Dwight is around – which is most of the time. They unfortunately mistake ex-gangbanger Lex as their enemy even…
All goes extremely well in David Koteles’ “After the Chairs” – his inventive reimagining/retelling of Ianesco’s “The Chairs” – until the otherwise well constructed play’s end. Marc (Allen Warnock) and his partner Richard (Don Cummings) are unique re-tellings of Ianesco’s Old Man and Old Woman. Here the couple is trapped in an absurdist cycle of caregiver-patient conversation that serves as…