the weir
There are very few words not sung but spoken in the rock musical “Tommy,” but three that might be relevant are “Brilliant, wasn’t it?” spoken by a local lad that happens to be part of a larger audience, amazed, while watching Tommy play his first game of pinball in a pool hall. Unfortunately, they are not the three words that…
Years (decades, centuries, eons) of interminable suffering hang over the gables of Grey House. And while there is no forgiveness or redemption within, the walls of the house encase unrelenting guilt where it remains hidden tapping out its own somber language of confession. Things do more than go bump in the night in “Grey House” Levi Holloway’s tale of horror…
The most recent revival of “Little Shop of Horrors” by the musical theatre team Howard Ashman and Alan Menken surely proves to be timeless and timely. The musical numbers still seem to linger in your head long after you leave the theater just as they did when the show first opened off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre in 1982. The plot…
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s groundbreaking “On Death and Dying” was first published in 1969. The Grief Cycle outlined in this book remains the standard for understanding the “stages” of bereavement for those survivors of death. Milly Thomas’s “Dust” currently running at New York Theatre Workshop in the Fourth Street Theatre provides a new standard of understanding the stages of grief, one for…
Chatillion Stage Company’s “Tech Support,” currently running at 59E59 Theaters, begins with the play’s protagonist Pamela Stark (Margot White) frantically pacing around in her West Village well-appointed apartment as she remains on hold waiting for tech support for her malfunctioning printer. Pamela deals in antique books and when she finally reaches tech support, she tells Chip, “I need to pack…
“Well — in any case, the play hadn’t been terribly well-liked by the public, and it wasn’t a success, but quite a few people had enjoyed it quite a bit, including, interestingly, a certain Mr. Ackerley, who not long afterwards began to take a more and more prominent place in our national life, which, I’d have to admit, was not…
It is Fringe season, and the lower East side of Manhattan is buzzing with the NY International Fringe Festival now celebrating a 19th year with a new theatrical kaleidoscope. As in years past, audiences, reviewers and staff search for the golden ticket, the reward of finding a few shows that might have a glimmer of hope for a future, or…
“It’s like all sandwiched together. And so they tesser to this other planet and Ms. Whatsit turns into this weird horse with wings kind of thing, and the earth from where they look far off is half under the power of this Black Thing.” (Peggy to Salinger) Margaret (Peggy) Salinger, daughter of J. D. Salinger, is a character in Anisa…
Conor McPherson’s “The Weir,” a haunting play of effervescent charm, finds a cozy home at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Directed by Irish Rep veteran Ciarán O’Reilly, the play bathes comfortably in old-country charm, fireside folk tales, and sepulchral gloom. The play centers around one night at a bar in rural Ireland. Excitement stirs in the placid village when Valerie, a…
The Acting Company in association with The Guthrie Theater has delivered a trimmed and taut reinvention of Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” (“The Scottish Play”) to audiences at the Pearl Theatre in Manhattan as part of its current tour paired with Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” This ninety minute “Macbeth” delivers the Bard’s iconic tragedy compressed…