the room
It has been a long journey for “The Roommate,” the dark comedy by Jen Silverman, to finally arrive on Broadway since its premiere in 2015 at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival. It was well worth the wait, since the current production now playing at The Booth Theatre stars Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone in a two hander that…
The March-April cover for Encore Monthly, featuring actor Bradley Gibson (The Lion King, A Bronx Tale), was revealed today, announcing the publication’s second issue that will hit mailboxes soon. The issue’s cover story takes readers into the wings with photographer Michael Kushner’s The Dressing Room Project, sharing an inside look at Broadway actors’ backstage rituals (including Gibson and others). Other…
Tony Kushner’s dystopian vision has a firm grounding in the history of the rise of fascism in Germany in the early 1930s and in the methodical and somewhat meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler to Chancellor of the German Reich. This vision is embodied in “A Bright Room Called Day” currently running at The Public’s Anspacher Theater. Mr. Kushner places himself…
“And there it was. My first laugh. It’s like that flash I’ve heard morphine addicts describe. A warm sensual blanket that comes after a cold, sick rejection. I was hooked.” – Lenny Bruce (from “I’m Not A Comedian . . . I’m Lenny Bruce”) The first image after the lights come up on stage is a slumped over, motionless, naked…
Several characters appear in “In A Room, Waiting,” particularly because the room in question is a hospital waiting room. These “visitors” have little else to occupy their time other than browsing outdated magazines or entering a conversation that might either ease their apprehension or perhaps escalate their level of anxiety. Malcolm (Thaddeus McCants) and Aisha (Jarielle Whitney), a young unmarried…
The remarkable Anita Gillette, now an octogenarian, returns to the Metropolitan Room for a two-night gig with her sexagenarian friend Harold Sanditen. The pair – separated by a span of twenty years – transcends, nay transforms, the notion that age differences affect deep friendship and the misconception that age affects the quality of vocal performance. Like Harold and Maude before…
The only words that can come close to describing what Baby Jane Dexter is are “cabaret legend” and, of course, those who have seen her perform know that she is so much more. It seems almost senseless to find a new way to shower praise and applaud her recent performance at The Metropolitan Room. Critics, peers and music aficionados have…
I am going to tread gently here, but there are shows that appeal to sophisticated, seasoned theatregoers, and those that would be more embraced by the tourist crowd, perfectly happy to be entertained no matter how silly the antics. Which brings us to “The Robber Bridegroom,” produced by the Roundabout Company, and performing at the Laura Pels Theatre. This is…
Matthew is stuck. Stuck in his musical career. Stuck in his search for true love. Stuck in his miniscule apartment in New Jersey. Stuck with his group of friends stuck in their own millennial generation angst-ridden matrix of unrealized dreams. Additionally, Matthew would prefer not to perform his music anywhere but in his claustrophobic apartment just west of the Eden…
What is a successful money manager to do after serving time in prison for the misappropriation of funds and finding he is bereft of family, friends, and home? The Speaker in Def Poet RJ Bartholomew’s “I of the Storm” faces that precise circumstance and chooses to come to terms with his homelessness by embracing it and “letting go.” This Speaker…