Loving Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner is easy. Making an audience care about them theatrically? That is the challenge “Gene & Gilda” never manages to meet. Any play about such strong and well-known characters must earn that emotional investment through good writing, strong performances, and compelling staging, regardless of how much audiences might adore Gene and Gilda in real life….
Primary Stages current offering is Theresa Rebeck’s new play entitled “Dig.” Now playing at 59E59 theatres, the play revolves around the situations that develop in a small plant shop that has its name “dig” stenciled on the glass window of the front door. The playwright takes every possible opportunity to utilize a plant or horticultural metaphor to translate or foreshadow…
“Foxes” a new play by Dexter Flanders now having a run at 59E59 theaters is appropriately named since the two central characters Daniel (an earnest Raphel Famotibe) and Leon (a complex Bayo Gbadamosi) resolve their issue following the age-old idiom of being “clever as a fox.” Mr. Flanders has penned a complicated story that deals with themes of sexual identity,…
Marin Gazzaniga’s “The Unbelieving” is based on select interviews from the 2013 book “Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind” by Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola. The authors interview clergy from various denominations who have been grappling with their loss of faith in the divine and their fears of being hypocritical by not sharing their unbelief with their congregations/adherents….
Promising a touching love story following a one-nightstand encounter in Amsterdam, Clarence Coo’s “On That Day in Amsterdam” (currently on at 59E59 Theaters) delivers instead a convoluted story of risk, disenfranchisement, immigration policy, art history, and duplicity that has little to do with the narrative’s main characters. This is unfortunate given the actors are outstanding, the direction first-rate, and the…
A new play entitled “The Sabbath Girl” by Cary Gitter is the latest production to take the stage in theater “B” at 59E59, transferring from Penguin Rep Theatre where it had its world premiere. It presents itself as somewhat of a rom com, structured similarly to a sitcom, moving the action forward with a series of very short scenes. The…
Veteran actors of screen, stage, and television Harry Hamlin and Stefanie Powers do their best to bring Joshua Ravetch’s “One November Yankee” to the stage at 59E59 Theaters on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Despite their heroic efforts, Ravitch’s script lacks the sophistication and strength to match the formidable skills of the cast. The three stories that make up “One November…
Loss looms large over four Texas residents in Stephen Brown’s “Everything Is Super Great” currently running at 59E59 Theaters. Nineteen-year-old Tommy (a sullen and hapless Will Sarratt) has lost his father, his brother, and he’s “not really allowed inside of an Applebee’s ever again.” Tommy’s mother Anne (a bellicose and overwhelmed Marcia Debonis) has lost her friends, her husband, one…
There is no denying that a retrospect on of the life of Albert Einstein and the development of his renowned Theory of Relativity would be compelling and extremely interesting. To present this study in the form of musical theatre is a challenging and difficult task that requires a keen intellectual and creative perspective. The discerning approach to this undertaking used…
Part group therapy, part intervention, part Doctors Phil and Ruth, “Fern Hill,” currently running at 59E59 Theaters through Sunday October 20, 2019, rehearses the events at Sunny’s (Jill Eikenberry) and Jer’s (Mark Blum) country farmhouse (Fern Hill) that take place with their close couple friends and frequent guests Vincent (John Glover) and Darla (Ellen Parker) and Billy (Mark Linn-Baker) and…