A new solo show has opened at the Greenwich House Theater, written and performed by Ari’el Stachel, who won the Tony award for best supporting actor in the musical, “The Band’s Visit.” It is not a “coming out” story, but it is about his personal struggle with anxiety and his journey to “figure out” his identity. It started when he…
Jordan E. Cooper’s “Oh Happy Day!” at The Public Theater promises to explore whether a queer man rejected and abused by the church can choose his own happiness on his own terms. It’s a radical question that deserves a radical answer. But Cooper delivers a morality tale about earning God’s love through forgiveness and obedience instead. His protagonist Keyshawn (played…
The latest production to open at Atlantic Theater Company is “Let’s Love,” a trio of one-acts penned by Ethan Coen. No surprise the subject matter addressed is love, what love is, how to express love, or how people try to find love. It is a love fest where love is examined under many different circumstances. All three one-acts resemble short…
The question asked in the title of the new play being presented by Bedlam Theater is “Are the Bennett Girls OK?” Well, the simple answer is, “Yes!” They are doing just fine in a new adaptation of the Jane Austen favorite novel, “Pride and Prejudice.” Penned by Emily Breeze, this adaptation does take a few liberties and does not exactly…
“Was I sleeping, while the others suffered?” Vladimir asks this question in Act II of “Waiting for Godot,” and it hangs in the air of the Hudson Theatre like an accusation. It is the question we do not want to answer—the one about complicity, about privilege, about who gets to zone out while the world burns. When Keanu Reeves delivers…
Actor and comedian John Leguizamo makes his playwrighting debut at The Public Theater with “The Other Americans”, which may certainly be billed as a new American Tragedy. Although it may draw some similarities to “Death of a Salesman”, featuring a dominant patriarch and the disintegration of the American Dream, the comparison ends there. The head of the Latino family that…
“You always step in,” Jacob Dunne (Will Harrison) tells us from the stage of the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, explaining the code of the Meadows housing estate where loyalty means throwing fists without thinking. “Always. With a mate. No matter where, no matter what.” This philosophy—this toxic, tribal, inevitable logic—will cost James Hodgkinson his life in a single, unprovoked punch…
“You could be dead tomorrow,” young Dave (Daniel Marconi) tells his army buddy Bobby (Harrison Tipping) during a night out in 1979 Belfast, justifying their reckless behavior. “Live in the moment.” Thirty-five years later, after Bobby’s murder, that moment has become the only moment that matters—an endless present tense of guilt, rage, and impossible choices. Leo McGann’s “The Honey Trap,”…
The new musical “Saturday Church” which is now playing at NYTW, is based on the 2017 film written and directed by Damon Cardasis, who also co-wrote the book for this production alongside James Ijames. This quasi-jukebox musical attempts to weave the music of Sia into the storyline, but it is also only quasi-successful in this endeavor. Too often the music…
They are just three men in modern-day Louisiana – Ogun Size (André Holland), a mechanic; his ex-con brother Oshoosi Size (Alani iLongwe); and a charismatic drifter, Elegba (Malcolm Mays). But in playwright Tarrell Alvin McCraney’s hands, they are also gods wrestling with eternal questions about duty versus freedom, protection versus possession, and the price of keeping those we love safely…