OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

It's the summer theater event that many of us wait for at 59E59 Theaters. Produced by Throughline Artists, Summer Shorts 2018 Festival of New American Short Plays presents three different short plays performed in one program. With Series A and Series B is now happening, you can get your tickets for ...

One of the most exciting and important voices to emerge from the 1980s-90s American performance art movement, Karen Finley might be regarded as one of the country's most noted censored artists....

The late afternoon and early evening rain that had been steadily falling last Friday didn't stop the faithful from arriving at Central Park's Delacorte Theater for Shakespeare In The Park's return of the Public Works' 2016 musical version of TWELFTH NIGHT....

'I sound like Borat and I look like Seinfeld,' jokes the Russian-accented illusionist Vitaly Beckman, who indeed sports a resemblance to 9th Avenue's most famous diner patron....

Coming in at the heels of landmark musicals like AIN'T SUPPOSED TO DIE A NATURAL DEATH and INNER CITY, composer/lyricist Micki Grant's DON'T BOTHER ME, I CAN'T COPE was an important part of the early 1970s surge of Broadway musicals that were not only about African-American experiences but were writ...

MACBETH seems to be one of the most abused pieces from Williams Shakespeare's canon; yet, when a production does the show justice, it is incredibly spellbinding. Luckily for fans of the play and art of theatre in general, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more robustly magnificent production of the c...

When the smash hit revue SMOKEY JOE'S CAFE, celebrating the pop classics of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, opened on Broadway in 1995, director Jerry Zaks staged each beloved number with snazzy show-biz slickness and glitz, suggesting the ways they might have been performed by the artists who introd...

The NYC premiere of 'The Originalist,' written by John Strand and directed by Molly Smith, is now on stage at 59E59 theaters. This is a vital story for our times. It contrasts political and social perspectives while still proving that people can maintain a sense of civility. This enthralling theatri...

'If life were only moments, then you'd never know you had one,' sings a character from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's INTO THE WOODS while pondering whether the intimate encounter she just experienced would turn out to be of lifelong meaning or just a barely significant distraction....

It's a classically-styled cinematic pose. The kind that tends to define a certain era of film noir. A woman stands alone on the Coney Island boardwalk on a chilly day. Covered in a tan trench coat, belt tied at the waist, she stares out at the ocean. After a few moments, emotions sweep over her and ...

The person seated in the back of the orchestra section on opening night of the Encores! Off-Center concert mounting of GONE MISSING, who was loudly sobbing during the closing song, was by no means causing a disturbance. In fact, the choked-up moans of heartbreak being emitted throughout New York Cit...

'Now that the winter formal gives way to glorious spring fling,' recites our antihero at the outset of Mike Lew's enormously clever contemporary riff on Shakespeare's RICHARD III, titled Teenage Dick, 'we find our rocks for brains hero Eddie - the quarterback - sleeping through his job as junior cla...

This is not shaping up to be a good year for Oscar Hammerstein II, American musical theatre's most important writer, who spent the first half of the 20th Century not only making significant strides to convert the genre from loosely assembled entertainments into respected and influential pieces of dr...

'We're all fully interested in navigating this brave new world with them,' says an exasperated character in Jordan Harrison's comedy of social politics, Log Cabin, 'but it sometimes seems like they want us to get it wrong... Like they're filling a quota of perceived transgressions.'...

Jason Robert Brown was just 25 years old when his SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD took the stage of Off-Broadway's intimate WPA Theatre. As he played piano and led the handful of musicians in director Daisy Prince's production, a quartet of actors who all had big things ahead of them (Brooks Ashmanskas, Andre...

Perhaps some of the good people at Britain's Royal Court are in need of a hug these days.  This week New York playgoers welcomed two transfers of exceedingly violent productions from that celebrated London theatre.  But while, over at The Public, the bloody finish of David Ireland's CYPRUS AVENUE ...

On the surface, the plot of CYPRUS AVENUE is just a little too weird to take seriously, and that's one of the strengths of David Ireland's creepy drama, as director Vicky Featherstone, Artistic Director of London's Royal Court, seamlessly transitions the piece from cerebral exploration to dark comed...

"The existence of queer people of color, particularly of African descent, has repeatedly been washed over, or forgotten altogether," writes Donja R. Love, whose SUGAR IN OUR WOUNDS is receiving a handsome and well-acted production from Manhattan Theatre Club, via director Sahaam Ali....

If upon entering a theatre, the stage is populated by a young black man sleeping under a street lamp as another young black man quietly scrutinizes all in attendance, while the pre-show music plays Doris Day singing 'Que Sera, Sera,' it's a good sign that there are going to be some strong opinions e...

David Friedman and Peter Kellogg may be billed, respectively, as composer and bookwriter/lyricists of the rollickingly fun new musical comedy DESPERATE MEASURES, which has just moved from the intimate York Theatre to more spacious digs at New World Stages, but they can also add 'problem-solver' to t...

Everybody needs a good laugh. That's just what you'll get when you see 'Police Cops' at 59E59 Theaters. The show wraps up the theater's annual Brits Off Broadway Festival of shows. Presented by New Diorama Theatre, this imaginative, zany show is written, directed and performed by the three member aw...

Is there anything more charming than watching two older people falling in love? Well, perhaps. Like when the romance occurs, as instructed by playwright Charles Mee in his 2001 one-act, FIRST LOVE, in 'the world of Magritte.'...

From the very beginning, one of the most important tenants of Joseph Papp's vision of free Shakespeare in Central Park has been the insistence the company of actors audiences see on stage will always reflect the extraordinary and powerful cultural diversity of New York City....

'Blackbird,' is currently being presented at the Sargent Theatre at the American Theatre of Actors. In the play written by David Harrower, Una, a 27 year old woman, shows up at the workplace of an acquaintance, 'Peter', with an axe to grind. Fifteen years earlier, they had a relationship which had ...

Presented by Theater Breaking Through Barriers and under the direction of Christopher Burris, The Fourth Wall is anything but inhibiting, especially in terms of its creation. This Off-Broadway company brings actors with and without disabilities together to break stereotypes and portray how little th...