Alan Ayckbourn is unquestionably a prolific and popular playwright whose seventy-nine plays have delighted and challenged audiences for almost sixty years. He has explored the vicissitudes of the human condition with pith and panache and often focuses on the relationships between women and men and, most often, on the misdeeds of the latter gender. The Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough…
“I like your sweater. That color’s good on you. Is that purple? (Ellis to his daughter) “So sometimes when I close my eyes there are cats and ocelots and burning trees. And sometimes the trees run like men on fire and sometimes there are ocelots up in the branches and they’re burning too.” (Ellis in “The Purple Lights of Joppa”)…
“Himself and Nora,” currently playing at the Minetta Lane Theatre, follows the life and career of the iconic James Joyce (played with a stolid cheerfulness by Matt Bogart) and his muse Nora Barnacle (played with a steely charm by Whitney Bashor) with historical accuracy. Jonathan Brielle’s new musical highlights events in the couple’s lives in chronological order from their meeting…
Okay. A Millennial young woman named Annie (Keilly McQuail) sits in a bowling alley bar late at night hunched over her beer as a second Millennial – a young man named Gabe (Gabriel King) – enters the bar from the lanes. Annie says, “Nice shoes.” Gabe responds, “What?” So begins Dan Moyer’s new play “Half Moon Bay” currently running at…
The Women’s Project Theater (WP Theater) has announced the world premiere of Stuffed, written by and starring internationally renowned comedian and two-time Grammy Award nominee Lisa Lampanelli (HBO, Comedy Central, The Howard Stern Show), with additional material by Ashley Austin Morris. Directed by Jackson Gay (These Paper Bullets!), previews begin Friday, September 23, 2016 and Opening Night is set for Friday, October…
The new production of “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown” at the York Theater Company would seem to be a clever idea, using age appropriate actors to portray the renowned Peanuts characters, especially after a successful concert version at “54 Below.” The difficulty with this concept is that the show was not written for children to perform. The vocals needed…
Cal (played with a haunting despair by Katya Campbell) is in a mess. Urban Chicago was the ideal place for her husband Tim (played with a brave vulnerability by David Harbour) to make money pitching beer distributors’ craft brews but not the ideal place for Cal – who grew up in rural Missouri – to live and the raise her…
“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:24) One legitimate critical…
The jury remains out in the scientific community: which came first the brain or the mind? Throw into the discussion precisely where memory resides and how it is accessed and the debate becomes even more interesting and convoluted. Playwright Nick Payne focuses his interest on the brain and memory and in the American premiere of his “Incognito” – currently playing…
With some surprise – and a modicum of disbelief – I overheard the two Millennials settling in behind me at the performance of “Hadestown” I attended at the New York Theatre Workshop sharing that they “had no idea” what the show they were there to see was about. Is it possible to reach ones 20s and 30s and not know…