When couples have conversations about aging and approaching the end of their lives, generic yet fundamental questions arise. “What happens if I die before you? “Do you think you will die before I do? What am I going to do without you? “How will I live without you? “Is there anything you want to tell me before one of us…
As a result of playwright Mfoniso Udofia’s profound interest in the African Diaspora, perhaps no fictional couple in the recent history of Off-Broadway theatre have had their histories more parsed than Nsikan Disciple Ufot and his wife Abasiama Ekpeyong Ufot. “runboyrun” and “In Old Age,” currently running at New York Theatre Workshop, are the third and eighth plays in Mfoniso…
The nature-nurture psychological debate and the predestined-free will theological debate collide in Bess Wohl’s “Make Believe” currently running at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater, resulting in the brave and somewhat disturbing exploration of the blurred boundaries between what is perceived to be real life and what is perceived to be make-believe. The playwright raises several enduring questions, including whether there…
Last season, two off-Broadway plays – “Daddy” and “Slave Play” (both by Jeremy O. Harris) – highlighted significant issues about the self-identity of young black gay and queer men and raised rich and enduring questions about the role of family, friends, culture, and “indifferent yet fetishizing white gays” in that process of discovery. This season, Michael R. Jackson’s original musical…
With renewed concerns about an escalation of conflict in Iraq and the possibility of a new war initiative there, one would tend to believe that the revival of Christopher Shinn’s “Dying City,” currently playing at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater, would provide new insights into the earlier Iraq War and its effects on the soldiers who served here and on…
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts in Dave Malloy’s a cappela musical “Octet” currently playing in The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center. A group of eight “addicts” meets regularly (summoned by the mysterious Saul) to share the dynamics of their various addictions, hoping to achieve the recovery attainable through the support…
Charlotte and Doug Walker’s son Kai will be home from prison in three months to begin his court remanded probation. Kai is a white university student athlete who was convicted of raping a black female student behind a dumpster at the school and is half-way through his six-month sentence. Kai’s transgression has shaken the Walker’s world and rent any sense…
Once upon a time, in a not so very long time ago there was a beautiful young Nigerian woman named Akim (a self-absorbed yet fragile Níkẹ Uche Kadri) whose Ma (a stern but loving Maechi Aharanwa) and Dad (a somewhat subservient Jason Bowen) project their own flawed conception of what real beauty is (a thoroughly Eurocentric standard of beauty) upon…
Manhattan Theatre Club’s New York premiere of The Cake, written by Bekah Brunstetter (“This Is Us,” “American Gods,” The Oregon Trail) and directed by MTC’s award-winning Artistic Director Lynne Meadow (The Assembled Parties, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, The Commons of Pensacola), opens tomorrow at MTC at New York City Center – Stage I (131 West 55th Street). The…
Playwright Madeleine George sets her “Hurricane Diane” in an Early Anthropocene Time, the era defined as “the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.” Most, except members of the current Administration, see that influence to have been deleterious at best and are aware of the dire…