David and Zan, a young Westchester married couple and Peter and Beth, a married couple in their late 40s collide in a fragile foursome in Bill McMahon’s new “Cover” currently running in NYC at part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival. What happens in this refreshing play might not “make sense” to any of the four characters; however, they each…
“I often think: they have only just gone out,/and now they will be coming back home./The day is fine, don’t be dismayed,/They have just gone for a long walk.” Gustav Mahler, “Songs on the Death of Children” Long walks are important not only for those on foot but also for those left behind waiting for the return of (most often)…
“Crossing Swords” is an important new musical with multilayered and interweaving plot structures driven by a matrix of well-developed, dynamic characters who share a repository of complicated plots that the audience can readily identify with and understand. Joe Slabe has created an endearing book musical with transcendent lyrics and music and powerful and redemptive themes spun by an unexpected love…
“The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical; henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.” –…
The new musical “Motel Rasdell” debuting at MITF has a talented cast that works enthusiastically to overcome the blatant obstacles that are set before them. This new work offers nothing new or innovative as it attempts to continue development. The music is repetitive and derivative and to use the old tired theater cliché “vamps till death” with no evident purpose….
Alex Eisen’s and John Watts’ “The Dark I Know” chronicles the lives of two boys growing up in Frankfurt Germany during Adolph Hitler’s meteoric rise to maniacal power in post Work War I financially ruined Germany. Transported from Berlin to Frankfurt by his adoptive mother Hannah Schenck (Sabina Petra), Lukas (Johnny DiGiorgio) experiences the horrors of the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend)…
“Hollywood! Hollywood!” is a pleasant book musical that follows a group of “young hungry hopefuls faking, taking, and making it in Los Angeles for their chance to star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame” and a pair of older successful Angelenos – Hollywood star Laura Tanner (Trudi Posey) and her agent and paramour Freddy (Robert Zanfini). Ms. Posey’s and Mr….
War is a damn ugly business and it is no respecter of time, space, civilians, or soldiers. War “breeds strange circumstances.” “Yesterday Iran/Today Iraq” is a short by powerful look at these circumstances as Pvt. Steven “Stippy” Goodman, on the eve of his deployment to Iraq, finds a shoebox full of his grandfather’s World War II V-Mail which he sent…
What could be more absurd than a talking black plastic bag once home to a six-pack of beer? Perhaps more absurd would be hearing the bag talking to Margarita Mariposa as she waits in Cedar Chips, New Jersey for the bus to Manhattan, or hearing Margarita talking to the bag and taking the bag on the bus with her to…
Sachiko Ishimaru’s “Color of Life” chronicles the relationship between Rachel (Shino Frances) and Kazuya (Yasuhiro Ito) a young couple who meet on a flight to the United States from Tokyo. Kazuya is a young rising Japanese painter on his way to New York and Rachel is a half-Japanese lesbian young woman on her way back from Tokyo where she was…