OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

This and other personal tales are the core of John Cullum: An Accidental Star. Stories about the golden days of the American musical and his friendships with the likes of Richard Burton, Robert Goulet, and Julie Andrews, told in his home-style manner, is interspersed with songs from shows in which h...

The visuals may be left to the listener's imagination in The Public Theater's new audio play, but what lands on the ear takes Joseph Papp's revolutionary concept a bit further....

Even if Americans weren't recently subjected to the horror of violent deaths and the attempted murder of elected officials inside the U.S. Capitol Building, the issue of representatives desiring the right to carry firearms in congress would be enough to bring new relevance to William Shakespeare's d...

Health efficacy and academic bureaucracy clash in ADJUST THE PROCEDURE, a timely pandemic play about a group of deans and directors at an NYC college who meet to disclose, debate and deny a rash of compounding crises....

The Seeing Place Theater offers a futuristic glimpse of artists adapting to a changed culture in Liz Duffy Adams’ 2004 absurdity, DOG ACT....

'I am not a Beckett scholar,' Bill Irwin advises viewers at the outset. 'Mine is an actor's relationship to this language. By which I mean the deep knowledge that comes from committing words to memory, and speaking them to audiences.'...

For the first time in twelve years, Americans were being served by a president who fully supported The Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision when the pseudonymed playwright Jane Martin's 1994 Pulitzer finalist KEELY AND DU premiered....

While not exactly a moment of déjà vu, I did feel a sense of the familiar while listening to director Saheem Ali's new podcast production of Anne Washburn's provocative play of Trump-era liberal ideology, SHIPWRECK, subtitled 'a History Play about 2017'. It was followed almost immediately by an in...

A good creepy play can get under the viewer’s skin.  Caryl Churchill’s Far Away is one such piece.  The setting is a “familiar country, over the period of several decades.”  While the country may be familiar, the goings on are most certainly not.  A sense of dread, foreboding and discomf...

PTP/NYC is known for producing politically aware plays.  They present theatrically complex and thought-provoking works of contemporary social and cultural relevance.  For their abbreviated season this year, they are streaming four productions over four weeks.  The second one, Don't Exaggerate (de...

After an impressive inaugural production of HAMLET in the atmospheric surroundings of Jersey City's Grace Church Van Vorst, Artistic Director Sean Hagerty's Shakespeare@, like so many theatre companies around the country, was suddenly placed in the position rethinking its immediate future....

When playwright/director Richard Nelson introduced Public Theater audiences to a family of Rhinebeck, New York residents by the surname Apple, he referred to his creation as a 'disposable play.' Well, it's been nearly ten years and, thankfully, he hasn't disposed of the Apples yet....

'What does it mean to have a Black man who is deemed unfit to rule and what does it mean to have a Black woman take his place?'...

'I was lying in the bath last night. And it just occurred to me, I all of a sudden realized: I have not touched another human being for over three months.'...

'I guess I knew that you could miss the things you love; I didn't know you could miss the things you hate,' ponders a New York apartment-dweller who sees little reason to get out of bed as she lives in isolation in this era of COVID-19....

'The first cough in the audience and who's listening to the play?,' wonders a character when contemplating the return of live theatre....

For over two years, the Chicago-based Candle House Collective has been creating non-tradition, immersive theatre for both site-specific locations and virtual enjoyment. But with the current health crisis putting live theatre on hold, their virtual plays can be especially inviting for audience member...

When thinking of site-specific theatre, visions of following actors through a forest as they play out A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM or sitting in a musty old playhouse for a performance of FOLLIES may dance through your head, but in these days of government-regulated social distancing necessitating the ...

As someone who has indulged in all the creations concocted by the genius director/choreographer Austin McCormick for his spectacular mix of performing artists, Company XIV, since the early years of this century when they displayed their talents in modestly-scaled productions on East 4th Street, this...

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For BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON, Michael Friedman whipped up an emo rock score that comically skewered white male privilege. For LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST his music and lyrics embraced the open-hearted awkwardness of lovers testing the waters of adulthood, and in THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, they nostalgic...

If it were up to Billy, the sweet-natured Unitarian pastor who opens Hilary Bettis' 72 Miles to Go... speaking to audience members as if they were members of his Tucson, Arizona congregation, the play about his family would be one of those warm domestic comedies where the kids learn valuable life le...

From the Marin Headlands, a hilly peninsula north of San Francisco that overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge, a father points out to his ten-year-old son the spot across the bay where he first met the boy's mother....

Hideki Noda's powerfully dynamic, physically demanding, utterly engaging and thoroughly entertaining works have been seen across the world's stage and now he returns to one of the most significant homes of the underground theatre movement in NYC -- The Ellen Stewart Theater at La MaMa -- in One Gree...

After spending two full careers as a Broadway composer, first writing jazzy smash hits with lyricist Lorenz Hart and then adapting more dramatic and character-driven styles for scores penned for classics with Oscar Hammerstein II, Rodgers, upon his second partner's passing, for the first time suppli...