“Bernard Shaw’s Caesar & Cleopatra,” currently playing in Theatre 1 at Theatre Row, injects a palpable dose of modernity into the history of the relationship between Caesar’s Rome and Cleopatra’s Egypt. The 1898 play parses the political landscape in Shaw’s fictionalized account of the relationship between the royal pair and Cleopatra’s desire to assume complete control of the throne from…
Undertaker John Plunkett (Jeffrey Bean) and his intern Mark (Cillian Hegarty) enter the office of a funeral home on the Northside of Dublin where John works. They have just finished a service and John compliments Mark on his work at the graveside. With that non-descript arrival, Conor McPherson’s “Dublin Carol,” currently playing at Irish Repertory Company, begins its narrative. Over…
As a result of playwright Mfoniso Udofia’s profound interest in the African Diaspora, perhaps no fictional couple in the recent history of Off-Broadway theatre have had their histories more parsed than Nsikan Disciple Ufot and his wife Abasiama Ekpeyong Ufot. “runboyrun” and “In Old Age,” currently running at New York Theatre Workshop, are the third and eighth plays in Mfoniso…
Part group therapy, part intervention, part Doctors Phil and Ruth, “Fern Hill,” currently running at 59E59 Theaters through Sunday October 20, 2019, rehearses the events at Sunny’s (Jill Eikenberry) and Jer’s (Mark Blum) country farmhouse (Fern Hill) that take place with their close couple friends and frequent guests Vincent (John Glover) and Darla (Ellen Parker) and Billy (Mark Linn-Baker) and…
Writing a play about two iconic figures like Paul McCartney and John Lennon is risky business. Detailed information about their lives, their work, and their relationships is abundant and readily available. For a script about the famous pair to be engaging and relevant, the writing needs to include either new information or it needs to attempt to bring some new…
What could go wrong at a private school whose board of directors (all five of them) make all decisions based on consensus and have only what benefits the community at heart. A board so committed to inclusion that the school’s cultural identity drop-down menu for prospective parents offers eleven choices. And if Eli (Brian Wiles) has his way, because of…
Keith Hamilton Cobb has been on an urgent mission, crisscrossing the United States since 2013 performing his “American Moor.” Mr. Cobb’s almost-one-man-show is a trope, here an extended metaphor, for the pressing need for dialogue around the systemic racism and other “false securities that our society rests on” (Rachel Elizabeth Cargle). Keith Hamilton Cobb makes it clear that unless we…
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s groundbreaking “On Death and Dying” was first published in 1969. The Grief Cycle outlined in this book remains the standard for understanding the “stages” of bereavement for those survivors of death. Milly Thomas’s “Dust” currently running at New York Theatre Workshop in the Fourth Street Theatre provides a new standard of understanding the stages of grief, one for…
Chatillion Stage Company’s “Tech Support,” currently running at 59E59 Theaters, begins with the play’s protagonist Pamela Stark (Margot White) frantically pacing around in her West Village well-appointed apartment as she remains on hold waiting for tech support for her malfunctioning printer. Pamela deals in antique books and when she finally reaches tech support, she tells Chip, “I need to pack…
After a successful run at the Public’s Newman Theater earlier this year, “Sea Wall / A Life” by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne opened at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre on August 8th, 2019. Both are haunting and unforgettable plays, each performed by a brilliant actor. In Simon Stephens’ “Sea Wall,” Tom Sturridge portrays Alex, a photographer on a holiday with his…