Michael Dale - Page 30

Falling in love is the easy part. Functioning day to day as a couple can take work, especially when sexual incompatibility becomes an issue.

As the grand finale of their fourteen year residency at Christopher Street's Lucille Lortel Theatre, before moving to their brand new Hell's Kitchen digs, Manhattan Class Company brings in an encore engagement of Jocelyn Bioh's Lortel and Outer Critics Circle Award-winning drama from last season, the endearing and poignant School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play.

The angry graffiti painted on the red bricks of the Bogside alleyway, memorializing Irish Republicans who have fallen in the cause of independence, contributes to the ominous mood of the opening scene of Jez Butterworth's Olivier-winning THE FERRYMAN, which has transferred to Broadway with most of its large London cast intact.

'I grew up in working class Toledo,' says the subject of Emily Mann's Gloria: A Life, arguably the most potent, informative, emotionally riveting and ultimately uplifting theatre piece currently playing in New York, 'and my biggest dream was to become a Rockette.'

'I take liberties with things that deepen the central truth of the piece,' explains writer John D'Agata. 'Don't get bogged down in the details, keep your eye on the big picture.'

Behind most poverty-to-celebrity stories, there's usually a hard-working parent or two who dreamed of a better life for their child, but perhaps never imagined that better life might include rock stardom, athletic heroism or, in the case of Jane Anderson's Mother of the Maid, breaking all gender molds to lead an army that will free their enslaved country.

While it would be easy to exit the York Theatre these days having been absolutely swept away by Mark Sonnenblick's wonderfully engaging and ear-tingling score for his new musical, MIDNIGHT AT THE NEVER GET - a sumptuous collection mixing beautiful melodies framing lyrical poetics with jaunty numbers loaded with snazzy jokes and unexpected rhymes - it's the superb storytelling of his book, exploring issues of the 1960s gays rights movement in a universal manner that can apply to other civil rights battles, that makes the musical truly soar.

Savvy New Yorkers will immediately have a clear picture of the work environment when Azgi, the narrating character of playwright/actor Aasif Mandvi's solo piece SAKINA'S RESTAURANT, says he's moving from a village in India to Manhattan to work as a waiter at a restaurant located at 400 E. 6th Street.

'A Jew? In heaven? Jews?' an incredulous 92-year-old Cosima Wagner asks her delirium-induced vision of her long-gone husband, Richard, at the outset of Allan Leicht's history-based My Parsifal Conductor.

Though designer Rachel Hauck's set for Heidi Schreck's inescapably truthful, yet eventually hopeful autobiographical performance piece WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME is based on the author/performer's memories of her home town's VFW Hall, it's likely that many audience members entering the auditorium of New York Theatre Workshop will take one look and be reminded of recent photos depicting Christine Blasey Ford's view of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Do not expect a rousing 'Rainy Day Woman'/'Blowin' In The Wind'/'Mr. Tambourine Man' dance mega-mix.at the end of Girl from the North Country, playwright/director Conor McPherson's lovely, introspective drama that incorporates twenty selections from the extraordinary songbook of American folk legend Bob Dylan.

British playwright Richard Bean made a riotous Broadway debut six years ago with the knockabout farce ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS, but his newest hit to cross the Atlantic, The Nap, while full of good-natured fun, partakes in subtler eccentricities.

'All that privilege and he can't figure out how to do anything?,' ponders one of the world's greatest actors as she attempts to delve into the psyche of one of the world's greatest theatrical characters.

The press script provided to critics reviewing Craig Lucas' somber and overstuffed drama, I WAS MOST ALIVE WITH YOU, specifies that the play 'was created to be performed by Deaf and hearing actors for Deaf and hearing audiences' and that all productions 'must provide full access for hearing and Deaf audiences at all performances.'

Don't be surprised to immediately sense a bit of familiarity in the dynamic between the two main characters as director Austin Pendleton's very fine La Femme Theatre production of the lesser-known Tennessee Williams drama A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur commences.

Dorothea 'Polly' Noonan, the real-life central character of Sharr White's new political drama, THE TRUE, was the grandmother of current United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.  If times were different, she might have been in the Senate herself, keeping the seat warm for her.

While the exact location of composer Ben Green, lyricist Greg Edwards and bookwriter Allan Rice's funny and frothy new musical dating adventure, Neurosis, is never revealed, it's a safe bet that New Yorkers, who have glamorized and romanticized neurotic tendencies into a beloved badge of honor, will mightily relate to its wacky antics in the name of love.

For the better part of the present decade, playwright/director Richard Nelson has been going seriously Chekhovian, first with a quartet of plays set during the Obama years in the Rhinebeck, New York home of a family named Apple and then with a trio of visits during the 2016 presidential campaign with the nearby Gabriel family.

Eat your heart out, THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE.  Paul Weiss' 1963 historical drama, better known as MARAT/SADE, now hands over the crown for play with the longest title to mount a major New York production to Jen Silverman's delightful bit of heartfelt absurdism, COLLECTIVE RAGE: A PLAY IN 5 BETTIES; IN ESSENCE, A QUEER AND OCCASIONALLY HAZARDOUS EXPLORATION; DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL AND YOU READ ABOUT SHACKLETON AND HOW HE EXPLORED THE ANTARTIC? IMAGINE THE ANTARCTIC AS A PUSSY AND IT'S SORT OF LIKE THAT.

There are times in musical theatre when a talented cast performing their hearts out can make questionable material not only endurable, but even somewhat enjoyable. Sadly, this is not the case with R.R.R.E.D., which, while given a game try by a quartet of enthusiastic belters displaying ample showbiz pizzazz, begins with a potentially interesting idea and never goes anywhere with it.