During the Fidel Castro regime, “Operation Pedro Pan” transported children fleeing the growing fears of Communist indoctrination in Cuba to the safety of the United States where some of the children were reunited with family or relatives while others were cared for by the Catholic Welfare Bureau. Based on this historic event, the new musical aptly titled “Pedro Pan” is…
Playwright Mike Lew characterizes his play “Teenage Dick” as “vaguely from Richard III.” The protagonist of this engaging and quite dark play is high school junior Richard Gloucester (Gregg Mozgala). Richard has CP and likes to speak with a Shakespearean flair and verbiage. His disability and diction have made him the object of verbal and physical harassment. This Roseland High…
Margery Kempe was an English Christian Mystic during the 14th and 15th centuries who was tried for heresy multiple times but never convicted. During the late Middle Ages, the task of interpreting the Bible and God was restricted to ordained priests but interpretation through the senses and body became the dominion of woman mystics. Kempe’s autobiography is the first written…
Because opera enthusiasts would be seduced by the music of Bizet and musical theater aficionados would savor a work that contained the lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein ll, it seems only logical to combine the talents of both to create a Broadway show. It was done in 1943 when Mr. Hammerstein adapted Bizet’s opera “Carmen,” moving it from a tobacco plant…
Both upper-east-side resident Daisy Gamble (Melissa Errico) and psychiatrist Dr. Mark Bruckner (Stephen Bogardus) need clarity in their lives. Daisy lives in the Barbizon Hotel for Women and is applying for a job at Latimer and Latimer and has “until the afternoon” to quit smoking to meet the company’s policies. She is down to her “last month’s rent. Daisy does…
Ezra’s (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) stories about his father’s reaction to the news that Ezra was marrying Chris (Phillip James Brannon) and then, later, that they were going to have a baby serve as bookends for Jordan Harrison’s LGBTQ themed new play about “our origins” and how “denying our origins is not healthy nor is denying our children the right to…
The themes of Miles Malleson’s “Conflict,” currently running at the Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row, could not be more relevant and the playwright’s treatment of these themes could not be more modern or progressive. The main characters, except for Tom Smith (Jeremy Beck), are early 1920s London elite – the one percent who have the most money, property, and power…
“All they need now is to find an enemy.” – Senator Walter Crane in “A Blanket of Dust” After her husband Sam was killed (murdered?) when the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, Diane Crane (Angela Pierce) becomes appropriately obsessed with finding out who was responsible for the destruction of the Towers. Unconvinced that…
Once again, a stage at 59E59 welcomes the wonderful Jessica Walker to Brits Off Broadway with her new show “All I Want Is One Night,” a somewhat bio-musical about the openly lesbian French chanteuse Suzy Solidor who opened her own nightclub La Vie Parisienne in the 1930s. Solidor’s claim to fame erupted from a publicity stunt to be recognized as…
With a nod to magical realism, Edward Albee’s “Zoo Story,” and a splash of the surreal – specifically the world of René François Ghislain Magrritte – Charles Mee provides a mostly realistic narrative about the experiences of an older couple who fall in love for the first time. Currently running at Cherry Lane Theatre, Mr. Mee’s “First Love” is a…