“Missed Connections: A Craigslist Musical” is being presented at the New Ohio Theatre after successful runs throughout Canada. It is a musical cantata with lyrics taken or derived from actual ads placed on Craigslist. That indeed ensures a variety of interesting and bizarre subject matter that is approached throughout the ninety-minute production. It is sung through as a rapid succession…
It is a difficult and a brave undertaking to choose to stage Henrik’s Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt.” The Classic Stage Company recently accepted the challenge with a sparse two-hour (with no intermission) version in June of 2016. It becomes more difficult when one attempts to overlay the complex script with a new narrative – the quest of an LGBTQ Peer Gynt…
Normally long bus rides usually do not cause much discomfort, taking the stress out of driving, providing some time to catch up on your latest read, or having a relaxing conversation with your travel mate to pass the time. Often the traveler can meet a stranger, strike up a conversation, share some snacks, and learn secrets about them and quite…
“Miss” is about unspeakable acts: horrific, unforgiveable, heinous acts committed by seemingly “normal” and “respectable” individuals. Because of the structure of Michael Ross Albert’s play, it is difficult to speak of these acts without having to issue a plethora of “spoiler alerts.” The most unspeakable are committed by a Laura (played with a suspicious gritty innocence by Rosie Sowa) a…
One of the many LGBTQ themed offerings in the N.Y. International Fringe Festival is “Cyrano: a love letter to a friendship” penned by Sean Peter Drohan who has attempted to create a play that slightly parallels the infamous Rostand drama but with a modern day gay twist. In this adaption, Cyrano, played with a nerdy self-pity in flawed physical shape,…
Steve (played with a sincere and charmed ambiguity by James E. Smith) has a lot on his mind. His important story is stalled on his editor’s desk at work and has not yet been published. His fiancé Katie (played with a bubbly ferocity by Sarah Moore) is apparently pregnant – Steve comes home from work early to change his soiled…
Self-described foul mouthed talking, pill popping, lady loving Molly “Equality” Dykeman (Andrea Alton) is back – again it turns out according to the ratings on Yelp – at Enchilada Shelly’s for a friend’s wedding. Molly is a butch security guard at P.S. 339 in the Bronx who, unapologetically, sports a mullet and an orange vest – she wears the vest…
Gay-themed plays have been a staple of the New York theater scene for decades, including the Fringe Festival, which offers over forty shows this year alluding to all aspects of gay life and history. Through the years, the content, impact and impression of these plays has changed considerably as has the struggle, acceptance and civil rights of the LGBTQ community….
At some point on “Off Track,” – it might have been in a phone conversation with his ex-boyfriend just before his phone died – Ian (Matthew Trumbull) says, “It’s too late to fix it.” This phrase could easily describe James Comtois’s “Off Track” several scenes earlier when it was already too late to fix his FringeNYC 2016 play currently running…
Falling somewhere between a cheap Penny Dreadful and a horrific Sci-Fi B-movie, Michael Paul Wirsch’s “The Curse of the Babywoman” (hereafter “The Curse”) has found its way onto the stage of the Lower East Side’s Teatro SEA as part of FringeNYC 2016. The residents of Shrubtown live in fear of the hoard of shapeless, formless babies who haunt the woods…