“My mother just walked out the door one morning, and never came home. She once said to me: “Follow your heart, Matthew. Follow your heart, and you will always be happy.” I’m going to follow my heart. This way I’ll always know that she’s proud of me.” – From Matthew’s Prologue Just as Matthew’s (Austin Caldwell) “high end” video camera…
Catherine Trieschmann’s new play “The Most Deserving” is a delicious and raucous mélange of six characters facing their own and others’ sexism, racism, and homophobia as they struggle to bestow a twenty thousand dollar award to a deserving local visual artist. “This artist,” Jolene Atkinson (Veanne Cox) informs her Arts Council, “must have lived in Ellis County for five years….
Buried somewhere beneath tired (and tiring) humor – much of it in poor taste – lies a story Liz Peak and Barry Peak intended to be engaging as well as humorous. Unfortunately their well-intentioned plan falls mostly flat in the world premiere of their “Philosophy for Gangsters” currently running through March 1, 2014 at the Beckett Theatre on Theatre Row…
Charles Busch and his band of merry-makers have pitched camp (for all too short a time) at 59E59 Theater A for the final offering in Primary Stages’ twenty-ninth Season, Mr. Busch’s gender-bending and exquisite “The Tribute Artist.” The result of this incursion into the winter blues is nothing short of brilliant. From cast to creative team to direction, this delicious…
“when by now and tree by leaf/ she laughed his joy she cried his grief/ bird by snow and stir by still/anyone’s any was all to her” – E. E. Cummings Ginette (Kelly McAndrew) and Pete (John Cariani) provide the dramatic context for Mr. Cariani’s “Almost, Maine” currently running at the Gym at Judson and already extended one week even…
Trope after trope thrusts Jessica Dickey’s “Row After Row” into a kaleidoscope of images present and past celebrating humankind’s insistence on moving forward through often seemingly insurmountable “battles” on an off the theatres of war. Currently running at New York City Stage II, “Row After Row” is part of the Women’s Project Theater’s thirty-sixth season of presenting plays written by…
“We come here today to question, to debate, to learn, to grow, and, yes, to leave our mark in the record so that future generations may share the privilege of learning who they are by remembering who we are. What would you have us do instead? How else would you have them remember us?” – Leonard Fishman, General Editor, “Beertown…
Any controversy resulting from the atrocities heaped upon the nations of the Original Peoples of North America by the United States and its corrupt and capricious Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is an important and somber discussion. Mary Kathryn Nagle’s “Miss Lead” brings sharp and disturbing focus to the events surrounding the Tri-State Mining District in Joplin, Missouri. Several American…
There is an interesting, stylish and refreshing short play entitled “The Window” debuting now at the Cherry Lane Studio Theater, produced by Teatro Italiano Network. It is an intriguing work which plays well on stage but also has the uncanny ability to present itself somewhat as a television series which you want to tune into next week to see what…
“When rain has hung the leaves with tears/I want you near to kill my fears, / To help me to leave all my blues behind. / Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind.” – Donovan Billed as the confrontation of the inexorable mystery of fate by two friends spending a day boating, Jon Fosse’s “I Am…