“What hope is there for an escape from evil?” (Nick Chopper) “The Woodsman,” the new theater piece by James Ortiz, is inspired by the back story of the “Tin Man” before Dorothy arrives in Oz and is adapted from the beloved writings of L. Frank Baum. It is an inventive, magical journey empowered to be told with sparse dialogue, beautiful…
“Yeah, and every time, you say, “no no no,” and then three months later we’re back together again or you want to be back together again and I’m like “no way” and so why don’t we just cut the crap and do it right one time.” Chris to Amber in “Utility” In the midst of the caucuses in Iowa and…
Once upon a time there was a couple who, while vacationing in Vegas, decide to get married in the Little White Wedding Chapel. When they return home to Manhattan, Michael (played with a powerful vulnerability by Johnny Wu) assumes he will be able to move in to his new wife Sonya’s (played with the charming mix of feisty aggressiveness with…
“All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.” (Sean O’Casey) Brendan Gall’s “Wide Awake Hearts” currently running at 59E59 Theaters is “about” many things. There are themes in this lustrously written play despite its Character A’s (Ben Cole) protestation that “I don’t write from theme. It’s just a story I thought of.” And there is conflict…
“We two, how long we were fool’d,/Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,/We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return./We have voided all but freedom and all but our joy.” Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass” After receiving clearance from Caroline’s (Kayla Ferguson) mother, high school classmate Anthony (Reggie D. White) shows up in Caroline’s bedroom…
Maurice Hines has been tapping through his prestigious career since he and his brother Gregory – at three and five years old – were discovered at Harlem’s iconic Apollo Theater while attending a performance of the Count Basie Band with singer Joe Williams. Mr. Hines begins his highly entertaining “Maurice Hines Tappin’ Thru Life,” now playing at New World Stages,…
“Isn’t that what we would have wanted from our parents?/the encouragement to be true to our own compass/the freedom to fall and get up/despite the fear of falling again?” – Staceyann Chin Like the “Star Wars” franchise, “Motherstruck” is best understood and appreciated as a complex set of extended metaphors, rich tropes for the important themes of nurturing, self-realization, unconditional…
Continuing the legacy of the late Lee Theodore who established the American Dance Machine on 1976, Nikki Feirt Atkins founded the American Dance Machine for the 21st Century in 2012 “to create a living and vibrant archive of classic and current notable music theatre choreography.” This remarkable archive is celebrated in AMD21’s current offering at The Joyce Theater through Sunday…
Stuart Ross’s “Forever Plaid” has been presenting its four-part guy group for decades and has maintained a successful presence in part because of its connection to the pleasing feelings of nostalgia summoned by the performances of hits from the past. And also in part because of the consistently superior quality of the voices and the vocal and musical arrangements of…
Imagine a Kingdom – not just any Kingdom – where the Leader is under a spell that renders him mute and cannot be broken until the “mouse devours the hawk.” The Leader has no voice therefore no power. Imagine. Wait, there is such a Kingdom, in fact several of them where the leaders seem to be under spells that prevent…