If you are not yet in a Holiday mood, perhaps a trip to Bucks County Playhouse where “Million Dollar Quartet Christmas” is now playing, may ignite your spirit. What can be more inspiring than hearing seasonal favorites sung by Jerry Lee Lewis (an exuberant Jason Cohen), Carl Perkins (a calming Sam Sherwood), Johnny Cash (an engaging Tyler Michael Breeding) and…
There is an abundance of medical and anatomical references in “Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man & The Pool” currently running at Lincoln Center Theater’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. Mr. Birbiglia’s affinity for medicine is often part of or the central theme in his stand-up comedy gigs around the nation. His particular interest in his own health is also pivotal to his…
If Will Arbery’s “Evanston Salt Costs Climbing were an absurdist play, its non-sense narrative might make some sense. However, this is not a “Waiting for Godot” for post-pandemic Evanston, Illinois, or a pre-recession America. Peter (a foul-mouthed and depressive Jeb Kreager) and Basil’s (an equally foul-mouthed but agreeable Ken Leung) world borders on meaningless and the play’s characters are experiencing…
Under Michael Arden’s meticulous direction, Jefferson Mays navigates through his adaptation (with Susan Lyons and Michael Arden) of the five staves of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” with the full arsenal of his impressive craft. In addition to the protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge, Mr. Mays portrays and reimagines fifty of Charles Dickens’ iconic characters with the full range of emotion from…
You will get sick. It happens. You do not know why. Often you do not want to tell anyone you are sick. Perhaps you might even pay someone to talk to you about your illness. Yet after all that, you still might die. And you are not alone. Rabbi Harold S. Kushner wrote about “When Bad Things Happen to Good…
Playwright Mia Chung intends to raise a rich and enduring question in her play “Catch as Catch Can” currently running at Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater: “What is inherent in our inheritance? What is universal?” Unfortunately, this question is not addressed nor answered in her character-driven play featuring Cindy Cheung, Jon Norman Schneider, and Rob Yang as Irish American…
Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” debuted on Broadway in 1959 and appeared in London’s West End five months later. The musical adaptation “Raisin” won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1973 and the play had two Broadway revivals in 2004 and 2014. This powerful and ground-breaking story of a financially strapped Chicago South Side Black extended family’s…
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….
In the current 20th anniversary production of “Topdog/Underdog,” Suzan Lori-Parks reminds the audience that when one does not receive unconditional and nonjudgmental love and chooses to disconnect from one’s cultural and family histories, things can and will go terribly wrong. From the first scene of the play currently running at the John Golden Theatre, it is evident that there is…
There is too much noise on the set of Victor I. Cazares’s “american (tele)visions” currently running at New York Theatre Workshop (co-produced with Theatre Mitu). Although that noise comes from what is certainly a dynamic and innovative set design by Bretta Gerecke and a clever technical design by Theatre Mitu’s Justin Nestor, Alex Hawthorn, and Kelly Colburn, it unfortunately masks…