OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

Style. Class. Grace. Charm. MAKE MINE MANHATTAN returns to its roots on the New York stage as a pocket revue after a larger Broadway production opened in 1948 and ran for nearly a year at the Broadhurst Theatre. This new revival preserves all the old-fashioned style and charm that was originall...

59E59 Theaters welcomes Pure Projects, Inc., in association with Uncle Frank Productions with the Off Broadway premiere of The Maria Project. Written and performed by Marcella Goheen and directed by Larry Moss, The Maria Project runs now through April 1st. Using documentary footage, music and stor...

Somewhere around the middle of Denis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson's solo play adaptation of Homer titled An Iliad, the storyteller, known simply as The Poet, halts his detailing of the Trojan War because something he just mentioned reminds him of an event that occurred in... And then he takes several mi...

In its opening moments, it would be completely understandable to assume that Assistance, Leslye Headland's viciously fun satire of the cutthroat dealings among entry-level twenty-somethings, might be mimicking David Mamet's dark comedy of film executives, Speed-the-Plow. ...

CAP21 Theatre Company presents the world premiere of MARRYING GEORGE CLOONEY: CONFESSIONS FROM A MIDLIFE CRISIS. Based on a memoir by Amy Ferris, this new play by Amy and Ken Ferris along with Krista Lyons, officially opened March 1 at the CAP21 Black Box Theater (18 West 18th Street). Frank Ventu...

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It's not your garden variety playwright who can draw you into a two-person drama with an extended dialogue comparing the healing effectiveness and fragrance of competing brands of foot salts.  But the comfortable comic exchanges that sweeten the early moments of Athol Fugard's Blood Knot cleverly ...

Though Eugene O'Neill was a grownup thirty-one years of age when Beyond The Horizon, his first full length play, opened on Broadway in 1920, the landmark domestic drama is boiling over with so much youthful angst you might expect its trio of lovers to start whipping out microphones to belt out emo...

Shortly into Bertolt Brecht's Galileo, the 17th Century Italian scientist shows his young companion a model of the Ptolemaic system of the universe, a gyroscope-looking creation depicting the sun and planets and other celestial bodies revolving on golden bands of orbits around the earth.  And if yo...

The controversy remains fresh as a Daisey down at The Public Theater, where extemporaneous monologist Mike Daisy returns for a new engagement of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs....

Given its pedigree as a Pulitzer winner that swept every playwriting award an Off-Broadway entry could win during its premiere run in 1997, you would think that Paula Vogel's How I Learned To Drive would follow the lead of other Off-Broadway successes like Driving Miss Daisy, Steel Magnolias and, mo...

The original Broadway cast album of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Merrily We Roll Along is one of those handful of recordings - like Mack and Mabel and Candide - that a musical theatre lover can listen to hundreds of times without hearing a clue as to why the show flopped.  The quick answer, ...

Wishing for a mid-winter break, but short on time and money? Look no further: the theatrical spectacle Brazil! Brazil! at the New Victory Theater provides a very affordable whirlwind sightseeing adventure and cultural experience for you and your family, without even leaving the heart of midtown....

When The Public Theater premiered Adam Guettel's Myths and Hymns in 1998 - under the title Saturn Returns - it was presented as a simple song cycle using chamber arrangements of pop, gospel and classical styles in a loose theme of exploring the human relationship to faith, utilizing traditional hymn...

It would be absolutely ridiculous if you missed this run. Performances are Thursdays - Sundays at 7:30pm, along with Saturdays matinees at 2:30pm and an additional performance on Monday, February 20 at 7:30pm. Tickets are $25 for adults and $20 for students/seniors and can be purchased online at ht...

'If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be called research,' explains a pharmaceutical professional in Rx, Kate Fodor's comic romance set around the big business of health care....

A stellar cast, smart script, and hilarious material make a successful therapy session in Frank Strausser's PSYCHO THERAPY at the Cherry Lane Theatre. A clever and witty take on couples therapy reveals unexpected twists and turns which leaves the audience refreshed and ready to tackle their own rel...

'It's not fair,' the 14-year-old girl complains to her mom....

Is it possible to recreate someone else's authenticity seven times a week doing the same Off-Broadway show?  If last Saturday night's performance of Gob Squad's Kitchen (You've Never Had It So Good) is any indication, the answer is a resounding... I'm not sure.  But in any case, the lighthearted m...

Few plays can take a true account of sexual abuse, family betrayal, suicide attempts, HIV-scares, abortions, and failed relationships and turn it into a smart (and often funny) story of hope and survival with clever staging and amazing talent. MISS KIM does just that....

It's all about perspective. LEO, played by one-man actor-acrobat, Tobias Wegner, comes to us straight from the Berlin-based production company, Circle of Eleven. A simple, yet interesting concept of skewed reality where, because of innovative staging under the direction of Daniel Briere, Leo's wor...

I've heard it said that there was this Australian fellow playing the Broadhurst recently who regularly had his audiences whipped up into quite a frenzy.  I've also heard of a Liverpool quartet that could pack screaming fans into a sold out Shea Stadium.  Now, I couldn't tell you if the decibel lev...

By my count, Outside People is the third theatre piece about a white American in contemporary China to hit town this season.  On the tails of Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs and David Henry Hwang's Chinglish, Zayd Dohrn's dark comedy deals with Yankee naiveté regarding cultur...

A confident Max Darwin rolls into the Manhattan Movement & Arts Center Theater on his "magic dune buggy" and begins his show by encouraging everyone to come see it. "Tell your family, your friends...the guy sitting next to you on the subway...." He then goes on to say, "I'm the Amazing Max and I kn...

The audience greets their star's entrance with a long round of enthusiastic cheers as she takes her place center stage and she, in turn, glares back at them with a look of unrestrained contempt.  That's the charm of Jackie Hoffman's relationship with her fans.  She always seems utterly annoyed at ...