Since its first production in 2013, Aaron Posner’s “Stupid Fu**ing Bird” – “sort of” adapted from Chekhov’s alluded to classic – cannot begin until a willing audience member takes Con’s (Christopher Sears) challenge and yells out, “Start the fu**ing play.” One wonders what would happen if the playwright had summoned enough courage to allow the audience – purportedly an essential…
“I wouldn’t want to be Frankenstein.” (Adam to Jenny in “Boy”) The Keen Company’s Mission is to create “theater that provokes identification, reflection, and emotional connection – enduring stories fearlessly told.” In order to fulfill that mission, there must be a master storyteller who knows how to create characters with conflicts (problems) that are not only engaging but connectable. The…
“You think I care that you’re judging me? I have a job, okay? /I work. At least I can go home and order food and pay for it. /I’m solvent.” (Delivery Guy) Time after time, in Town Hall Meetings, Primary Election exit polls, and Caucuses in the 2016 Race for the President, the main concern of the electorate seems to…
“Quiet please. It’s Jane Austen. Sit still and pay attention so you don’t miss anything. She’s tough to understand sometimes.” None of these admonitions or warnings are relevant when watching Bedlam’s production of Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” adapted for the stage by Kate Hamill and currently playing at The Gym at Judson in Manhattan. Bedlam’s stage version of this iconic…
Playwright Lucy Prebble attempts to cover an expansive range of themes in the North American premiere of her play “The Effect” at the Barrow Street Theatre. Although this choice gives her play a range of diverse and interesting conflicts, it fails to give the play a cohesive core leaving the audience to wonder what Ms. Prebble was trying to accomplish….
Rehearsal begin on March 21, 2016 for “Barbara Cook: Then and Now,” a candid and intimate evening conceived by 3-time Tony Award winner James Lapine and directed by 10-time Tony Award winner Tommy Tune. The production will begin preview performances Tuesday, April 12, officially open Wednesday, May 4 and play a strictly limited engagement through Sunday, June 26 Off Broadway at New…
I am going to tread gently here, but there are shows that appeal to sophisticated, seasoned theatregoers, and those that would be more embraced by the tourist crowd, perfectly happy to be entertained no matter how silly the antics. Which brings us to “The Robber Bridegroom,” produced by the Roundabout Company, and performing at the Laura Pels Theatre. This is…
“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” (Virginia Woolf, “Orlando”) “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” (Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own”) Darja (Marin Ireland) has not had a room of her own since she arrived in the United States from Poland with her…
Aaron Loeb’s intriguing “Ideation” – currently playing at 59E59 Theaters – could easily be categorized as a delightful off-beat Drawing Room farce (except the room here is a corporate Board Room) were it not for the play’s underbelly of moral ambiguity, suspicion, mistrust, conspiracy, paranoia, and an extra-marital affair. Coming off a successful business venture in Crete, Brock (Mark Anderson…
Primary Stages (Casey Childs, Founder & Executive Producer; Andrew Leynse, Artistic Director) announced their upcoming 32nd Season on March 14 at a champagne reception celebrating the Centennial of the birth of late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Primary Stages collaborator, Horton Foote. The 2016/17 season, to be performed at New York’s historic Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street, www.cherrylanetheatre.org), will feature…