OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

You have officially entered pop-punk paradise: a place where the people eat, sleep and breathe the essence of punk culture, channeling their thickly eyelined, rebellious year 2003-selves to walk in the famed footsteps of Avril Lavigne. It is a place where teenage angst and insecurity lend themselves...

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 mo...

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...

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...

Epic Theatre Ensemble is currently presenting The Winning Side by James Wallert at The Acorn Theatre/Theatre Row. The play tells the story of Nazi Germany scientist Wernher von Braun and his role in building the rockets that took an American man to the moon. Through time (and space) The Winning Side...

The New York City premiere of Mother Night, based on the 1962 novel by Kurt Vonnegut is now being performed at 59E59 Theaters through November. This riveting story has been superbly adapted and directed by Brian Katz. It features a talented cast that brings Vonnegut's intense tale of romance, decept...

'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....

The ShakesBEER pub-crawl is a fall happening, and like the other programs by New York Shakespeare Exchange, it is entertaining and captivating. The presentations were held on three consecutive Saturday afternoons on 9/15, 9/22, and 9/29....

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 audito...

The Cell is a unique gallery space used to present new shows. A current charmer is the New York premiere of The Evolution of Mann, with music by Drama Desk Nominee Douglas J. Cohen (Children's Letters to God, The Opposite of Sex) and book by Dan Elish (13, the Musical) and based on Mr. Elish's novel...

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...

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...

La MaMa is opening its 57th season with a crowd-pleasing bang by presenting Gunnar Montana's totally rad and dizzying performance art and dance spectacle KINK HAÜS. The piece is just the kind of ebullient combination of high brow ballet principles and techniques mixed with low brow hedonism all pla...

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...

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 wit...

The NYC premiere of 'Agnes,' written by Catya McMullen and directed by Jenna Worsham is being performed at 59E59 Theaters through September 29. It is a riveting portrayal of five individuals with with very different personalities and how they deal with their interactions and commitments. Performed i...

The New York City premiere of 'Separate and Equal,' written and directed by Seth Panitch, is now enthralling its audiences at 59E59 Theaters. The show is a stunning portrayal of race relations told through a combination of storytelling, basketball play, and contemporary dance performed to an origina...

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 mou...

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...

Perhaps if Clifford Odets' landmark pro-union drama, WAITING FOR LEFTY, hadn't opened the year before, Lillian Hellman's 1936 labor drama, DAYS TO COME, the sophomore Broadway effort of the playwright who made a huge name for herself two years earlier with THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, might have been bette...

The stage is quite empty, save for a makeshift throne in a corner and a couple of rows of ordinary looking chairs in the back, where actors not involved with scenes sit. The costumes are contemporary clothes, mostly black, with the occasional embellishment to suggest the 15th Century setting. When a...

It may not have the romantic sweep of 'Some Enchanted Evening' or the driving intensity of 'Don't Rain On My Parade,' but so far, the best new theatre song of this young season is a finely-crafted emotional shut-down carrying the unlikely title 'Michael In The Bathroom.'...

Back in the days, really not very long ago, when self-effacing gags about failed diets were one of the few topics of discussion deemed acceptable for women in comedy, the punchline Renee Taylor uses after telling about the time when she ate nothing but meatballs every day because it was the diet tha...