Perhaps the most problematic element in the new play “Fear” by Matt Williams is that it is flooded with too many sources of fear that tend to diminish the fear that might actually be present during the action of the play. Characters display their fear of infidelity, bullying, child welfare and safety. These concerns and fears are all revealed while…
Commissioned by Ars Nova in 2016 and currently playing at New York City’s Greenwich House, “Dr. Ride’s American Beach House” claims to be one thing but delivers something markedly different from its hype. Harriet (Kristen Sieh), Matilda (Erin Markey), Norma (Susan Blomaert), and Meg (Marga Gomez) are “a group of women with passionate opinions and no opportunities [sitting] on a…
There has always been a curiosity and appreciation for bold attempts at new interpretations or the reimagining of the classics and it seems there have been endless attempts on putting a new spin on more than one of these masterworks. There appears to be one more paradigm of this artistic endeavor in the Classic Stage Company’s new production of “Macbeth”…
Since its premiere at The Public in 1976 and its subsequent transfer to Broadway later that year, much has happened to continue to impact the lives of the women of color celebrated by Ntozake Shange in her choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf” currently running at The Public Theater’s Martinson Hall. In this incarnation,…
“Soft Power” – the culture-bending, plot-twisting musical within a play currently running at The Public’s Newman Theater – challenges the notion that the only effective parameters of power are money, race, and sex. These constructs of “hard” power are the hallmarks of greed, systemic racism, and misogyny and, from Xue Xing’s (a sensitive and alluring Conrad Ricamora) point of view,…
Three Gen Y Conservative Christians gather at Justin’s (a thoughtful and broken Jeb Kraeger) backyard in Lander, Wyoming to celebrate Generation X Gina’s (a confident and willful Michelle Pawk) inauguration as president of Transfiguration College of Wyoming. These “heroes” are preparing for a battle of Armageddon-like proportions. They do not simply disagree with those infidels on the left: they despise…
Bloody, gory, horror films certainly have been around for quite a while and have been successful in creating a cult audience that supports the genre. Transforming one of these for the stage would certainly be an audacious task. To go one step further, choose the horrific tale of Macbeth penned by William Shakespeare and take some extreme liberties to create…
The most recent revival of “Little Shop of Horrors” by the musical theatre team Howard Ashman and Alan Menken surely proves to be timeless and timely. The musical numbers still seem to linger in your head long after you leave the theater just as they did when the show first opened off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre in 1982. The plot…
Four years after the Ardeatine Caves Nazi Massacre, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty (a conflicted and contrite Sean Gormley) visits Colonel Herbert Kappler (a robust and tenacious Haskell King) in his cell in an old-fashioned prison in Gaeta, Southern Italy. Kappler, an SS Colonel and head of Hitler’s Gestapo in Rome, was responsible for the massacre of 355 Italians (a random number…
Jack Thorne’s “Sunday,” currently running at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater, seems to elicit one of two responses: disappointment or robust enthusiasm. A group of Gen Z friends gather in a New York City apartment for one of what has become Sunday Book Club gatherings. This Sunday’s meeting is at Marie’s (a somewhat broken and conflicted Sadie Scott) and…