“Soft Power” – the culture-bending, plot-twisting musical within a play currently running at The Public’s Newman Theater – challenges the notion that the only effective parameters of power are money, race, and sex. These constructs of “hard” power are the hallmarks of greed, systemic racism, and misogyny and, from Xue Xing’s (a sensitive and alluring Conrad Ricamora) point of view,…
“Dropping Gumballs on Luke Wilson” a new play by Rob Ackerman is based on the actual making of an ill-fated television commercial by AT&T that discredits the cell phone coverage of rival Verizon’s network. In that commercial, actor Luke Wilson (a convincing Jonathan Sale) stands in front of a Verizon network map covered with red dots to represent their coverage…
“The Other Josh Cohen,” currently running at the Westside Theatre/Downstairs, has been bemoaning the hapless and lackluster life of Josh Cohen (Steve Rosen) through his Doppelganger narrator Josh (David Rossmer) since October 2012. That’s a long time to celebrate having one’s apartment robbed of everything, rehearsing one’s dysfunctional family, recounting a string of failed romantic relationships, and resolving the mystery…
Harry Clarke (the persona and the person) was born out of the dysfunctional matrix of paternal abuse and maternal collusion that plagued Philip Brugglestein from his childhood through his adulthood. David Cale’s play “Harry Clarke,” currently playing at the Vineyard Theatre, is a complex and engaging psychological study of dissociative identity disorder (DID) and explores the provenance of that condition…
“And this is the thing: they will train you, they will teach you to hit, they will teach you to move – but they never tell you about the fear. Nothing the people in your Corner can tell you will prepare you for the fear.” – Jody to Carl Despite the outstanding performances of Arnie Burton and Matt McGrath, the…
Under the ruse of “receiving consent” from a minor, pedophile Joe (played with a remorseless arrogance by Joe Tippett) plays out an erotic asphyxiation fantasy with fourteen-year-old Jenny (played with a delusional naiveté by Abigale Breslin) in the basement of his suburban South Carolina home after “abducting” her from her home earlier. It does not matter whether Jenny got into…