OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

After Florenz Ziegfeld spent the early decades of Broadway's 20th Century 'glorifying the American Girl,' a young composer/lyricist named Jerry Herman spent a good hunk of the second half showcasing extraordinary women....

Summer Shorts 2017 is now onstage at 59E59 Theaters. We attended series B and enjoyed each of the short form theatre pieces that featured superb playwriting, expert direction, and outstanding performances....

Given her distinguished career that includes such significant works at PAINTING CHURCHES, COASTAL DISTURBANCES and PRIDE'S CROSSING, a new play by Tina Howe is certainly a noteworthy event....

The World Premiere of 'A Real Boy' is now onstage at 59E59 Theaters through August 27. Written by Stephen Kaplan and directed by Audrey Alford, this cleverly staged show provides a view of how parenting, education, and government policy can affect a young child....

Peter and Will Anderson, the brilliant musicians known as The Anderson Twins, have produced and created Songbook Summit at 59E59 Theaters with presentations that celebrate great American Songbook composers during the month of August....

New York City wasn't exactly the most magical place for a child to grow up in back in 1975. Crime and poverty rates were inhumanely high and when the city begged for federal assistance, the president, at least according to a Daily News headline, replied 'Drop Dead.'...

It was fifty years ago that The Summer of Love attracted throngs of lunatics, lovers and poets to New York's Central Park in a free-spirited embrace of life's passions and pleasures. That same spirit is now joyously celebrated in the park's Delacorte Theater, where director Lear deBessonet's luscio...

59E59 Theaters is currently presenting a real summertime treat for theatergoers, Summer Shorts 2017, Festival of New American Short Plays. We attended Series A, a superb variety of wonderfully performed pieces with moments that will make you laugh and touch your heart....

Places is an outstanding production written and performed by Romy Nordlinger, directed and developed by Kate McHugh. The solo show, complemented by multi-media, was just performed at 59E59 Theaters as part of East to Edinburgh, the theatre's annual preview for the Edinburgh Festival....

Connoisseurs of American musical theatre wishing to make a point about the genre's ability to dramatize even the most unlikely of subjects often cite examples like SWEENEY TODD's vengeful barber on a killing spree or THE PAJAMA GAME's labor/management dispute, but bookwriter/lyricist/composer Kirste...

As part of the New York Musical Festival, Generation Me is absolute perfection in its ability to prove how kindness and cruelty are of the same unfortunate hand. How people, so certain in their anger or jealousy, are sometimes so blind to what really matters: what can you do to help me?...

Written by Tom Stoppard, directed by Cheryl Faraone and presented by the Potomac Theatre Project as a start to its wondrous 31st season, Arcadia truly tests the limits of what constitutes a good show by not only compelling the audience to listen and understand, but also to feel and experience: a mix...

Even if you've never heard a note sung by Ella Fitzgerald (and if that's the case, you should stop reading this review immediately and look up some of her recordings on YouTube) Andrea Frierson's duo-bio solo show, ME & ELLA, can be related to by anyone whose life was influenced by a popular artist ...

Though your ticket says you're seated at The Public's Anspacher Theater, don't be surprised if once director Sam Gold's jaunty mounting of Shakespeare's Hamlet shifts into gear, you find yourself wondering if you may have stumbled into some indie production playing in the back room of a hipster bar ...

A folk-singing black man with an optimistic view of America looks back at our nation's history of angry white people finding no better way to cope with their grievances than by firing a gun at the president....

In December of 2015, shortly before her excellent drama SKELETON CREW opened Off-Broadway, playwright Dominique Morisseau essayed an article for American Theatre titled 'Why I Almost Slapped a Fellow Theatre Patron, and What That Says About Our Theatres.'...

103 seasons and going strong - and not just because of nostalgia. The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene has reimagined 'Amerike - The Golden Land', the 1984 musical by Zalmen Mlotek and Moishe Rosenfeld, appropriately running near Ellis Island. Weaving incredible stories with fantastic songs, mult...

While it's not unexpected to have the title character of a musical based on Henry Fielding's infamously bawdy 1749 novel "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" be introduced to the audience while enjoying the afterglow of a lusty time with an agreeable lass, what's a bit surprising at first about B...

As America's great playwrights go, Horton Foote, who passed on in 2009, just shy of his 93rd birthday, was perhaps the most understated of them all.  In a prolific career that involved golden age television dramas, Academy Award winning screenplays and dozens of stage works, his favorite source of ...

The newest offering at Lincoln Center's Claire Tow Theater features a beautiful dreamscape depicting a woman in a small boat being guided through swelling ocean waves by a friendly face painted on the moon. As designed by Brett J. Banakis (set), Montana Levi Blanco (costumes) and Eric Southern (ligh...

"It's not unusual to be loved by anyone…" Admittedly, this is the wrong Tom Jones and yes, I may have stolen this little pun from the show's opening narrative, but that Mr. Jones was on the perfect track to describing what chaos ensues in the life of a man whom everyone adores: the literary Tom Jo...

The recent Signature Theatre revival of Suzan Lori-Parks' VENUS, based on the true story of Saartjie Baartman, depicted a 19th Century African woman who was subjected to exploitation because of white people's fascination with her prominent posterior.  But the mood is considerably lighter over at Pl...

My Eyes Went Dark, written and directed by Matthew Wilkinson, is now onstage at 59E59 Theaters. This emotional, thought-provoking drama is inspired by real-life events.The play is part of the annual Brits Off-Broadway festival that will be held at the 59E59 Theaters through July 2nd....

Ask any New York Mets fan and they'll tell you that one of the unique quirks about watching a game at the teams' Flushing home - be it the now-demolished Shea Stadium or the current Citi Field - is the frequent rumbling of planes coming in and out of LaGuardia airport....

When playwright/actor Jim Brochu was announced as the 2010 Drama Desk Outstanding Solo Performance Award winner for his loving tribute to the great Zero Mostel, ZERO HOUR, circumstances of the evening set up an opportunity for him to open his acceptance speech with an incredibly funny, totally filth...