The latest offering at the Vineyard Theatre is “Bughouse,” conceived and directed by Martha Clarke, with a script adapted from the writings of Henry Darger, by Beth Henley. For those who are not familiar with the subject matter, Henry Darger was a prolific visual artist and epic novelist. He had a troubled childhood, losing his mother when he was 4…
At the center of Julissa Reynoso and Michael J. Chepiga’s “Public Charge,” now at the Public Theater, are two marginalized women who understood something the State Department establishment did not: that fifty years of failed policy toward Cuba needed to change. Julissa Reynoso (Zabryna Guevara), a Dominican immigrant and Obama campaign veteran, and Cheryl Mills (Marinda Anderson), Hillary Clinton’s Chief…
The most devastating moment in Ro Reddick’s “Cold War Choir Practice” is not a Soviet missile strike. It is an American bomb, planted by an American cult, detonating on South Salina Street in Syracuse, New York. As flames consume Davis’s Candy Emporium and Atomic Fireballs rain down like radioactive fallout, 10-year-old Meek (Alana Raquel Bowers) watches her nightmare made literal…
In her program notes for “You Got Older,” playwright Clare Barron shares her “optimistic belief that there is profound comfort in just living privately together. Life and desire can persist even if all we can muster up is the courage and time to sit together with something unspeakable between us.” It’s a beautiful articulation of what this 2014 play—now receiving…
Anna Ziegler’s “Antigone (This Play I Read in High School),” currently at the Public Theater’s Barbaralee Theater, is not the Sophocles tragedy I taught in high school—but then again, neither is James Ijames’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Fat Ham” the Hamlet Shakespeare wrote. The difference is that Ijames trusts his reimagining enough to tell his story without constantly stopping to explain it….
It has taken a very long time, actually 27 years, but Richard Maltby and David Shire have decided that it was “About Time,” their new musical revue, that completes the trilogy which began with “Starting Here, Starting Now” in 1976, followed by “Closer Than Ever” in 1989. It is about life in its third act, getting older and dealing with…
Abigail and Shaun Bengson welcome the audience to New York Theatre Workshop for “My Joy is Heavy.” They introduce themselves, the band, the crew. They explain this is a relaxed house performance—you can do whatever is good for your body and nervous system, there are access tables in the back, and if you have to get up and pee, they…
“Did You Write This Scene or Did I?” THE UNKNOWN at Studio Seaview When critics dismissed David Cale’s “The Unknown” as a solo thriller with a “tired twist,” they revealed more about their own jadedness than about the play’s achievement. At Studio Seaview, in a production directed by Leigh Silverman, Sean Hayes delivers a performance of such psychological precision and…
It has been eleven years since the play “Every Brilliant Thing” penned by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe, opened Off Broadway at the intimate 199 seat Barrow Street Theatre in New York. The relatively unknown British comedian, Mr. Donahoe, also performed the solo piece which was based on his experience dealing with his mother’s and his own depression. After several…
A Theatrical Rorschach Test: CHINESE REPUBLICANS at Roundabout Alex Lin’s “Chinese Republicans” arrives at Roundabout Theatre Company with considerable ambition: a world premiere examining Asian-American identity through the lens of corporate culture, intergenerational trauma, sexual harassment, immigration policy, economic justice, and political ideology. Director Chay Yew stages the action primarily at Golden Unicorn, a Chinatown dim sum restaurant where four…