Think “The Gin Game” sans playing cards and nursing home and without the requirement of aging characters and ‘Bingo’ one discovers the delightful and charming “2 Across” currently enjoying an open-ended Off-Broadway run at Manhattan’s St. Luke’s Theatre. In Jerry Mayer’s new play Janet (Andrea McArdle) and Josh (Kip Gilman) meet on an early morning BART train from the San…
Adapting a novel for the stage comes with considerable risk. The adaptor needs to be as true as possible to the original dense text – especially in the case of C. S. Lewis. The adaptor also has to delineate the characters with honesty and believability and present their conflicts and the plot they drive with the authenticity inherent in the…
Depending on the point of view of the audience member, Jane Martin’s striking and deeply moving “H2O” can be viewed as either a play within a play or a remarkable retelling of the “Tragedy of Hamlet.” After its successful world premiere at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, the play is currently running at 59E59 Theaters in…
“I’m too old — they say — for more memories./No walking along the park in some darker breeze./You’re no city for dreamers, only lovers you leave behind./Oh, New York, do not waste my time.” (Burt Bacharach/Steven Slater) “Life is a Cabaret, old chum.” (“Cabaret”) It is New York City 1995. It is another time with different rules, a disparate energy,…
“I’m thinking unnecessary thoughts. I always keep busy, but what can I do? I can’t go to early morning mass. The reporters sit in nearby pews whispering their queries. I can’t take my daily walk on the golf course either. The photographers and the gawkers follow me even there.” – Rose Just a few days after her only surviving son…
Two men – one older, one younger – cross paths in the former Pennsylvania Train Station from 1963 until 1966. The older Joseph Lanzarone (Clyde Baldo) teaches American and British Literature at Xavier High School. The younger Paul Abbot (Matthew Pilieci) works on the crew contracted to demolish the iconic train station and is an amateur photographer. Each holds a…
The new musical “Trip of Love,” now playing at the 42nd St Theater, pays homage to some of the unforgettable hits of the sixties. It would be better described as a musical revue that is extremely well choreographed with lavish costumes and extravagant sets that together create an opulent psychedelic collage. It is neither thought provoking, nor particularly well structured,…
“If I ever hope to learn anything about myself and the things around me, I’ve got to stand completely on my own. That’s why I can’t stay here with you any longer.” (Nora to Torvald) Ingmar Berman’s “Nora,” the retelling (a reduction really) of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” is enjoying its English-language New York debut Off-Broadway at the iconic…
A long list of adaptations including those by Tennessee Williams (“The Notebook of Trigorin”), Emily Mann (“A Seagull in the Hamptons”), and Regina Taylor (“Drowning Crow”) have payed homage to Anton Chekhov’s 1986 “The Seagull” by retelling the story of the dysfunctional Russian family in a variety of creative ways. “Songbird,” currently running at 59E59 Theaters, continues the retelling tradition…
“Into each life some rain must fall/But too much is falling in mine/Into each heart some tears must fall/ But some day the sun will shine.” (Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots) “But into every life a little rain must fall.” (Queen) That unwelcome “rain” falls unexpectedly into the lives of the characters of Mark Gerrard’s scintillating new play in…