the nap

the nap

Off-Broadway Review: “Blue Ridge” at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater

Abby Rosebrock introduces an interesting mélange of broken characters in her new play “Blue Ridge” currently running at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater. She drops these six disparate “recovering” personalities into the vortex of a Christian halfway house in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. Pastor Hern (a cagey but caring Chris Stack) and his partner Grace…

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Off-Broadway Review: “Days of Rage” at Second Stage Theater’s Tony Kiser Theatre

Rooms full of missed opportunities sprawl across Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theatre where Steven Levenson’s new play “Days of Rage” is running through November 2018. Mr. Levenson, the award-winning book-writer of “Dear Evan Hansen, tackles the important issues of nationalism, xenophobia, and racism against the backdrop of a radical collective of three friends protesting the “atrocities” of the Vietnam War….

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Off-Broadway Review: “Fireflies” Redefines Love and Hope at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater

It is clear from the start of Donja R. Love’s “Fireflies” that Olivia Grace (DeWanda Wise) is among the disconsolate: Olivia is languishing: Olivia’s wounded heart needs healing. There is a fire in Olivia’s soul that counterpoints the fire in the 1963 Fall sky above the home in the Jim Crow South she shares with her preacher-activist husband Charles Emmanuel…

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Broadway Review: “The Nap” at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre

One would think mounting a Broadway show about snooker would be perilous. Richard Bean’s “The Nap,” currently running at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, unfortunately confirms that fear. Think “The Hustler” staged as a farce with poorly developed characters whose conflicts are not believable and drive a less than satisfying plot. Dylan Spokes (an energetic and engaging Ben…

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Outer Critics Circle Announces Its 68th Annual Awards Nominees for the 2017-2018 Season

Outer Critics Circle, the organization of writers and commentators covering New York theater for out-of-town newspapers, national publications and other media beyond Broadway, announced today (April 24, 2018) its nominees for the 2017-18 season. Broadway’s “Come From Away” star Jenn Colella along with “The Band’s Visit” sensation Katrina Lenk presided over the (11:00 a.m.) announcement ceremony in the Oak Room…

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Off-Broadway Review: “Kings” at the Public Theater’s LuEsther Hall

If there was any doubt about the monumental influence of lobbyists on Members of Congress in Washington, D.C., that uncertainty was dispelled quickly after the tragic murder of seventeen students and faculty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday February 14, 2018. Barely had the nations bereavement process begun before the NRA and the massive “I…

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Off-Broadway Review: “Hangmen” at Atlantic Theater Company

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” – “To A Mouse” by Robert Burns Despite his claim to be “quite content to keep [his] own counsel, as [he] sees fit, and leave the jibber-jabber to the riff-raff, the riff-raff,” former hangman Harry Wade (played with a menacing panache by Mark Addy) seems quite content to…

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Off-Broadway Review: “Stuffed” at the Westside Theatre Downstairs

If you are in the mood for insult comedy that claims to take the important topic of women and weight seriously – but does not – then Lisa Lampanelli’s “Stuffed,” currently enjoying a revival at the Westside Theatre Downstairs, might be a show to put on your “must-see” list. However, if you think making jokes about the color of Michael…

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Off-Broadway Review: “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train at The Pershing Square Signature Center’s Irene Diamond Stage

The value of enduring questions is that they are not specific to a time or place or event. Theatre should be raising enduring questions and conflicts that playwrights (and their cultures) grappled with hundreds of years ago and remain relevant today. Stephen Adly Guirgis raises several such questions in the revival of his play “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train,” currently…

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Off-Broadway Review: “Small World” at 59E59 Theaters

“See, this is the crux of the matter. We have different aesthetic touchstones. I am drawn to characters like Apollo, Persephone, Oedipus Rex. You prefer Jiminy Cricket – Bambi – Goofy. My Pluto lives in Hades, yours lives in a doghouse. You are living in some silly parallel universe, of which I want no part.” – Igor If the theme…

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