Michael Dale - Page 14

If there ever was a demand for greater representation on Broadway stages for straight, single, cisgender white guys in their 50s who are insensitive to the women he manages to date and have sex with, Tracy Letts' Linda Vista would surely fill the void. A sort of 21st Century toxic male take on Paddy Chayefsky's classic 'Marty', Letts' new one has its funny moments, and maybe even a bit of poignancy here and there, but is it worth spending nearly three hours watching some full-of-himself average lug continually screw up his romantic opportunities?

The desire to see our current president out of office as soon as possible can be regarded as a bit of common ground between the five conservatives depicted on stage and the liberals who traditionally populate the vast majority of seats at non-profit Off-Broadway theatres.  The ground most likely collapses, however, when it comes to how they regard the prospect of a Mike Pence presidency.

As explained in his program notes, playwright Jeff Augustin moved from Miami to attend college in Boston; envisioning New England as a liberal mecca where he could pursue his American Dream while freely exploring his identity. What he found was a part of the country he describes as a?oedeeply steeped in whiteness,a?? where people of color are regarded only in terms of their race-related experiences, rather than people living the full spectrum of human existence.

Slave Play ventures into subject matter the likes of which this playgoer has never seen presented on Broadway, and does so in a bold, even outlandish manner that should be admired and welcomed. This older straight white critic won't claim to get everything the 30-year-old gay African-American playwright is saying, but if voices like his-those that have long been nurtured and developed by non-profit Off-Broadway-can be commercially successful on Broadway, the fabled boulevard can advance just a little closer to truly being the artistic center of American theatre.

Say what you will about ANYTHING GOES and KISS, ME KATE, but for this musical theatre lover, there's no finer Cole Porter score than the one he whipped up for the 1929 hit, Fifty Million Frenchmen.

You might call John Kevin Jones the 'resident author' of East 4th Street's 1832 landmark Merchant's House Museum, though not in the traditional sense.

With its moniker giving a nod to John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme,' the fast and funny improv hip-hop show created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tommy Kail and Anthony Veneziale started playing gigs around town way back during Broadway's pre-rap era, leading to an Off-Broadway production last season that has more or less transferred to the Booth Theatre.

With its title taken from our 36th president's campaign slogan, Robert Schenkkan's exciting and energetic drama ALL THE WAY won the popular vote on the 2014 Tony Award Best Play ballot. Directed at a full gallop by Bill Rauch, its twenty-member cast (many playing multiple roles) portrayed a familiar assortment of 1960s politicians, public leaders, journalists and supportive spouses, all trying to let their voices be heard above the cacophony of American politics.

Imagine if Henry Higgins had wanted Eliza to end up with Freddy all along and you'll get a sense of where George Bernard Shaw was heading with his 1898 comedy of political maneuvering, Caesar and Cleopatra, which premiered over a dozen years before his more enduring classic, PYGMALION.

Even the most jaded New York playgoers who may start feeling a bit blasé about entering a theatre and seeing a large pool of water on the stage (Jeremy O. Harris' DADDY and Lucas Hnath's RED SPEEDO are two recent examples) will undoubtedly be intrigued by the sumptuous display of aquatic symbolism greeting them at the Park Avenue Armory for director Satoshi Miyagi's entrancing staging of Shigetake Yaginuma's translation of Sophocles' Antigone.

Audience members sensing a bit of déjà vu watching Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins superbly applying their craft in Christopher Hampton's English translation of French playwright Florian Zeller's The Height of the Storm at Manhattan Theatre Club's Friedman Theatre might smack their foreheads at the realization that this is where they witnessed Hampton's adaptation of Zeller's THE FATHER three years ago.

There are times, perhaps if you know someone studying theatre at a liberal arts college, when one may be invited to attend a student-written play about how hip it is to be culturally-aware twentysomething intellectuals struggling to make it in the big city. The kind of play where introverted women clash with men who give the appearance of being sensitive in order to get laid. They all drink lots of vodka while quoting books and plays and films that show off the playwright's varied points of reference more than offer any insights into character.

'This is a work in progress,' co-author Alix Sobler advised the Minetta Lane Theatre audience before a press performance of the autobiographical solo play, MARGARET TRUDEAU: CERTAIN WOMAN OF AN AGE.

The king is dead, and the women who were rivals for his affection suddenly realize he wasn't anything worth fighting over. Okay, then... dance break!

'Please don't mention specifically anything that happens in the show,' the star of Derren Brown: Secret requests of his audience about twenty minutes into his performance.

A bit over 400 years ago, a white Englishman named William Shakespeare scripted a play based on a story by a white Italian known as Cinthio about a Moorish general serving in the Venetian army, who is regarded as an outsider by his white colleagues because of his skin color.

When the lights go up on Lois Robbins' solo piece, L.O.V.E.R., the playwright/performer is demonstrating how, at age three, she would give herself orgasms by straddling her legs around the corner of her family's washing machine.

The elegant economy of language with which a trio of romantically entangled souls express themselves in Harold Pinter's 1978 infidelity drama, Betrayal, allowing for unspoken emotions to subtly work their way to the surface, is beautifully enhanced by the production elements of director Jamie Lloyd's riveting London production; transferring to Broadway with its three exceptional stars, Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox.

Sure, it's a bit early in the game, but what might turn out to be the funniest scene to hit New York stages in this young theatre season occurs at the end of the first act in Jonathan Spector's sharp and empathetic social commentary, EUREKA DAY.

While the name Walt Disney will certainly be familiar to all those arriving at the Delacorte for Public Works' stage adaptation of the 1997 animated musical feature Hercules, hopefully a good deal of them will leave Central Park remembering the name Lear deBessonet.