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…
“The End of Longing,” now playing and extended by popular demand at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, is yet another example of the evermore trending evidence that the use of star power will attract an audience regardless of the merit of the vehicle. In this case it is Matthew Perry starring in his less than interesting playwriting debut, which only…
“And now here I am. Am I alone here? This is who we are. Isn’t this the fate of Generation Y (The Millennial Generation)?” – Claire When stepping onto or off from the underground (subway), riders are reminded to “mind the gap” – to pay attention to the dangerous space between the train and the platform that awaits a sudden…
Currently playing at the Irish Repertory Theatre is a musical revue that has been making the International rounds for the last ten years appropriately titled “Woody Sez: the Life and Music of Woody Guthrie.” The cast of four perform about forty musical numbers from Guthrie’s songbook that conquer the feelings, sights, hardships and situations he experienced: from the Great Depression,…
“And the wheel goes round and round./And the flame in our souls will never burn out./And the wheel, and the wheel goes round.” – Rosanne Cash, “Wheel” Under the brooding branches that overarch Derek McLane’s visually stunning set that “goes round,” Julie’s (played with sumptuous death-dodging life by Grace Van Patten) life coalesces into a gripping surreal reality in Hamish…
After presenting a season that included the engaging “This Day Forward” by Nicky Silver and the soaring “Kid Victory” by Greg Pierce and John Kander, the iconic Vineyard Theatre has chosen to present Gina Gionfriddo’s mostly disappointing “Can You Forgive Her.” Billed as a “ferociously funny story of lost souls grappling with emotional and financial dependence, and the costs of…