OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

EndTimes Productions presents its 5th annual Yuletide bacchanalia at the Times Square Arts Center, a hilarious, free-spirited debauchery of anything goes (and it pretty much does). This musical not only rises to the occasion, but also proves that this year, it's "not about the holidays... it's abou...

While you probably wouldn't expect period recordings of 'Let's Do It' and 'St. Louis Woman' to be part of the pre-show soundtrack for a family friendly production of Snow White, director/choreographer Austin McCormick's Company XIV has never been a group to provide the expected....

Overall, Kissing Sid James was a good production. Farquhar delivered an ending that was counterintuitive to what I was expecting and therefore thoroughly satisfying. The audience was so invested in the story that when the first reference to Sid James was mentioned in Act I, everyone in the audience...

'We began this production with the simplest and most time-honored of theatrical practices,' writes New York Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director, Oskar Eustis.  'We were looking for the next great role for Jay O. Sanders.'...

59E59 Theatres welcomed the return of the New Perspective Theatre Company to their "Brits Off Broadway" festival with the American premiere of Michael Morpurgo's Farm Boy. Adapted as well as Directed by Daniel Buckroyd, Farm Boy opened December 13, and runs for limited time. A sequel to Morpurgo's...

For many Americans - okay, white suburban middle classers into traditional gender roles - the 1950s was an idyllic time when the country could rest easily with our post-war status as the world's super-power before the internal unrest of the 60s began exposing the ugly imperfections.  For stressed o...

Whether it's historic Off-Broadway theatres being replaced by chain stores and condos after their rents are tripled or beloved long-time Coney Island businesses facing eviction if they don't conform to the bland, antiseptic vision of new planners, New Yorkers are very familiar with the culture vs. c...

The Off-Broadway Shelter Theatre presents FAIRY TALE, of five original short plays inspired by the stories of The Brothers Grimm, Washington Irving, and Charles Perrault. Each story is a unique take on classic fairy tales, but unfortunately, there is hardly any semblance of the originals as these s...

Jacques Brel is dead and buried and entombed in French Polynesia and the Zipper Theatre, home of the very satisfying revival of Jacques Brel is Alive and Living in Paris several seasons back is now a beloved memory, but the producers of that mounting have been keeping the 'ol carousel madly turning ...

White Christmas is just too good a musical to be limited to holiday-time productions.  Especially when you have Larry Blank's ultra-snazzy swing orchestrations vibrantly delivering a gold-plated assortment of Irving Berlin classics and Randy Skinner's dancers heating up the floor with some sensatio...

Dael Orlandersmith has crafted an affecting, packed tale of addiction in the scope of a well-to-do white family that comes full circle in many shocking ways....

Let's face it; Silence Of The Lambs is one heck of a disturbing film. There's kidnapping, human skinning (and donning), human killing (and eating), unwelcomed public masturbation (and… sharing), mind games, criminals, memories of animal slaughter, local police, and bad pantsuits. With such horror ...

I don't think I'm giving away a major spoiler when I mention that toward the end of Thomas Bradshaw's Burning, there's a reference to one of the characters as having won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Play.  I'm not sure I'd appreciate the honor if I was John Benjamin Hickey, as...

Known primarily for their excellent work with the Prospect Theatre Company (of which she is Producing Artistic Director and he is Resident Writer), the husband and wife team of director/bookwriter Cara Reichel and composer/lyricist/bookwriter Peter Mills are responsible for some of the most exciting...

Three years ago I posted a review emphatically praising the Prospect Theatre Company's developmental production of Jim and Ruth Bauer's The Blue Flower, calling it, 'a unique, intelligent and wondrously creative evening of musical theatre' that 'skillfully tackles the tricky business of mixing the a...

If Hamlet is the reward an actor gets for showing great promise in his youth, King Lear is the thank you he receives in the latter years of a distinguished career.  At age 35, Sam Waterston's Hamlet became one of the iconic performances to come out of the New York Shakespeare Festival.  Now, at 71...

'You're an insane woman,' a character says to the protagonist in Michael John LaChiusa's intriguing new musical, Queen of The Mist....

Brits Off Broadway's 'Bunny' is presented as part of a three-series package at 59E59 Theaters. Maybe it would be better to present a two-series package instead....

The inner city teenage girls in Kirsten Greenidge's moving new drama, Milk Like Sugar, want only one thing from a boy... a baby....

What do you get when you combine a farting performer, a sex-crazed theatre director, and a bunch of scantily-clad can-can dancers? Not only a story that's true to life, but one that's actually quite compelling. ...

Love's Labor's Lost, generally not regarded as a top tier Shakespeare effort, might get performed a lot more frequently if more productions were as fun and frisky as director Karin Coonrod's madcap mounting for The Public Theater's Public Lab series....

Alison Fraser, Alysia Reiner, and Jill Shackner, together, are a powerful force to be reckoned with. A Charity Case opened Off-Broadway at the Clurman Theatre and gives us an insightful look into the private lives of a 17-year old adopted daughter who is torn between her biological mother, adoptive...

'Atmosphere is more real than truth,' explains Michael Evans, the narrating character recalling his childhood days in Brian Friel's thickly atmospheric Dancing At Lughnasa, now enjoying a warm and lovely mounting by Charlotte Moore at the Irish Rep....

Say Goodnight Gracie opened Off-Broadway at the St. Luke's Theatre with all the charm, style and sophistication you'd expect from George Burns' legendary years in the spotlight....

I'm taking up a collection to buy Elaine Stritch a pair of pants....