Stephen Cole’s “Inventing Mary Martin” is ninety minutes of adrenaline driven high energy singing and dancing devoted to remembering, honoring, and celebrating the life and career of the indefatigable Mary Martin. Broadway veteran Jason Graae narrates and hosts the tribute and is joined on the York Theatre stage by a trio of delightful divas: Cameron Adams, Lynne Halliday, and Emily…
“Annapurna” is a high-wire act with no safety net. Homer recounts the epic ten-year journey of Ulysses after the fall of Troy and chronicles his adventures and misadventures as he attempts to reunite with his faithful wife Penelope and their son Telemachus. James Joyce recounts the epic day-long journey of Leopold Bloom and unfolds his adventures and misadventure in Dublin…
Challenged by a chauvinistic comment after her 2011 Edinburgh Festival solo show, playwright Sabrina Mahfouz is determined to write “a tale of three females who could easily be the basis of crime-based computer games.” The result “Clean” is currently running at 59E59 Theater B as part of the Brits Off-Broadway Series. The short play is paired with Douglas Maxwell’s “A…
Sans Cerebral Palsy (CD), sans Tourette’s Syndrome, sans his “twisted spine,” Nihal emerges from a block of stone hewn by a surrogate mother/sculptor as his birth mother – who was not with him at his birth and was not with him when he died – watches behind a wall of protective glass. Perhaps that glass wall serves as an extended…
“I Remember Mama” at the Transport Group at the Gym at Judson (Through Sunday April 30, 2014) Written by John Van Druten Directed by Jack Cummings III Reviewed by David Roberts and Joseph Verlezza Theatre Reviews Limited Memory is a tricky thing. Remembering events from one’s past is fraught with complications. Like dreaming, remembering puts the one remembering in complete…
Bum Phillips (Gary Ramsey) is more anti-hero than hero in the opera being his name currently playing at the Ellen Stewart Theatre (La MaMa). The apparently iconic Houston Oilers football coach has to endure the same struggles heroes have always experienced (Ulysses, Antigone, and that lot) but the stakes in the strife seem lower and the return home less glorious….
Codependent and cramped in a fantasy of intimacy, Kali (Christina Bennett Lind) and Todd (Richard Saudek) wage a dangerous battle of wits and words and take no hostages in the revival of Bryony Lavery’s “Stockholm” the One Year Lease Theatre Company production currently running at 59E59 Theater B. There is little healthy fabric remaining in the marriage of Kali and…
“…People are rivers, always ready to move from one state of being into another. It is not fair, to treat people as if they are finished beings. Everyone is always becoming and unbecoming.” ― Kathleen Winter, Annabel Five writers, three directors, and six actors collaborate (conspire?) in five short scenes to tackle the sticky business of becoming in the Women’s…
“Hope comes in the doing, not in the waiting.” – Jean-Paul Sartre Cradeau, Inez, and Estelle – three war-weary Parisian compatriots – bear transgressions that serve as tropes for the horrors of the events surrounding World War II. Critics often have claimed that Sartre’s “No Exit” is not a war play; however, given the date of authorship and the autobiographical…
Channeling a more introspective and agonized June Cleaver, Sara Jane (Alexandra Silber) has an on-the-surface pleasant dialogue with all that is beyond theatre’s conventional fourth wall. In “Arlington,” currently playing at the Vineyard Theatre, that includes directly engaging the audience and the Pianist (Ben Moss) who appears behind an upstage scrim and not only accompanies Sara Jane’s non-stop singing but…