The epic new work penned by Stephen Adly Guirgis entitled “Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven” refers to the vast array of residents in a transitional shelter for women on the upper Westside of Manhattan. It is a motley group of misfits of every age, race, size, color and sexual status that seem to have a firm grip on the…
Jack Thorne’s “Sunday,” currently running at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater, seems to elicit one of two responses: disappointment or robust enthusiasm. A group of Gen Z friends gather in a New York City apartment for one of what has become Sunday Book Club gatherings. This Sunday’s meeting is at Marie’s (a somewhat broken and conflicted Sadie Scott) and…
Somewhere in France, or perhaps in England in the nineteenth century, a young married woman is standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes after an evening meal. A dish slips from her hand, breaking I pieces as it hits the floor. The young woman begins to cry, sob really. Her husband not understanding any of this “odd behavior,” reaches out…
The present-day social climate in the theater world has fervently addressed non-traditional casting, gender identity, and diversity as part of an effort to be inclusive and accepting. When a production exhibits a little gender bending, there should be a valid explanation or reasoning behind the decision, whether it be historical, social, or dramatic persuasion. In the case of “Eddie and…
Abby Rosebrock introduces an interesting mélange of broken characters in her new play “Blue Ridge” currently running at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater. She drops these six disparate “recovering” personalities into the vortex of a Christian halfway house in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. Pastor Hern (a cagey but caring Chris Stack) and his partner Grace…
It is clear from the start of Donja R. Love’s “Fireflies” that Olivia Grace (DeWanda Wise) is among the disconsolate: Olivia is languishing: Olivia’s wounded heart needs healing. There is a fire in Olivia’s soul that counterpoints the fire in the 1963 Fall sky above the home in the Jim Crow South she shares with her preacher-activist husband Charles Emmanuel…
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” – “To A Mouse” by Robert Burns Despite his claim to be “quite content to keep [his] own counsel, as [he] sees fit, and leave the jibber-jabber to the riff-raff, the riff-raff,” former hangman Harry Wade (played with a menacing panache by Mark Addy) seems quite content to…