Upon entering Pershing Square Signature Center’s Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre to view a new musical adaptation of Edgar Lee Masters’ 1915 “Spoon River Anthology,” we became a bit leery about the execution of this undertaking (no pun intended) as we walked down a dark hallway past Bertie Hume lying at rest in a casket. Continuing in the dark, we turned…
Until the time of reviewing this show, I had never been to the People’s Improv Theater during the past year that I’ve spent thus far living in New York. I’d heard many good things, and I’d even considered the possibility of one day taking another improv class (my first since my high school days) at a theater such as the…
Soulpepper Theatre Company brings its Toronto production of “Of Human Bondage” to the Soulpepper on 42nd Festival. Vern Thiessen adapted W. Somerset Maugham’s novel for the stage – the first stage adaptation of the iconic novel. Soulpepper is to be commended for taking on this formidable challenge. The results are both blazoned with success and tempered by the temptation of…
In a transformative eighty-five minutes, Appa (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) identifies “his story” in two very different ways. These diverse – and seemingly mutually exclusive stories – are the grit of Ins Choi’s “Kim’s Convenience,” currently running at the Pershing Square Signature Center’s Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre as part of the Soulpepper on 42nd Street Festival. Appa has built a…
Soulpepper on 42nd Street, the ambitious month-long presentation by Canada’s highly acclaimed Soulpepper Theatre Company, features original productions of “Spoon River,” “Kim’s Convenience,” “Of Human Bondage,” plus concerts and cabaret performances (and more). “True North: A Concert of Canada” opened the Festival with a diverse cast of performers and musicians that celebrated a distinguished collection of Canadian singers, songwriters, and…
At the suggestion of W. B. Yeats, John Millington Synge visited the The Aran Islands (Inishmore, Inisheer, and Inishmaan) during a part of each year from 1898 until 1902. Yeats urged Synge to live there as if he was one of the people themselves and “express a life that has never found expression.” His journals from these visits – “The…
Jamie Richards deftly directs Steven Haworth’s intriguing psychosexual farce “Fernando” at the Ice Factory Festival at New Ohio Theatre. Mr. Haworth has written an engaging story about Zachariah Smythe (Christian Durso) an art scholar who has come to a museum in Madrid to continue his research on the Spanish painter Fernando Rafael Vasquez de la Cruz. The museum’s curator Terese…
There are numerous reasons to see “Bastard Jones,” the new musical now playing at the cell, but topping the list is to purely enjoy an evening of raucous fun. Vying for that acclaimed position would be the prodigious cast that provides the farcical, sometimes titillating escapades of Tom Jones based on the irreverent novel by Henry Fielding. Next the book…
After a successful run at the 2016 Midtown International Theater Festival, “The Crusade of Connor Stephens” moves to the Off-Broadway stage at the Jerry Orbach Theater. There have been changes in this revival – not all of them necessary – but the heart of the play remains intact. Big Jim’s (James Kiberd) Baptist Mega-Church is expanding. More space is need…
If America – and the global community – has learned anything since January 20, 2017 it is the message that “words matter.” Words – spoken and left unspoken – play the central role in Lauren Yee’s “In a Word” currently playing at the Cherry Lane Theatre’s Studio Theatre. Words – comforting and unacceptable – are stored on a shelf in…