OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

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....

Could Jesse Eisenberg's ASUNCION, now playing at the Cherry Lane Theater, be our modern-day 'Odd Couple'? Like that classic Neil Simon comedy, ASUNCION tells the story of two mismatched male roommates attempting to co-exist in a small city apartment....

The wardrobe sure has gotten petite since it's gigantic 2005 film adaptation. Inventively set to a smaller scale, and a shorter running time for a younger audience, Off Broadway Family Theatre's production of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' gives a fresh new look at the classic novel....

I'm not going to lie. It's hard, coming from Sketch/Improv background like myself, to not know about The Reduced Shakespeare Company. Their fast, physical wit is what every Sketch Comedian and Improviser aspires to work toward....

'I want you to know that the most exciting part I've received recently is my new knee.'...

'Do you really think Apple doesn't know?'...

After more than 14 months at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, Mark St. Germain's clever and engrossing two-hander, Freud's Last Session, which depicts a visit between the aging atheist Sigmund Freud and the young, newly-Christian C.S. Lewis, who had satirized the famed psychiatrist in The Pilgr...

When considering the genre of 'girls night out' offerings currently playing Off-Broadway, the selection ranges from initially unintentional (Naked Boys Singing) to 'best when inebriated' (Miss Abigail's Guide...) to 'men really don't get this' (Love, Loss and What I Wore).  But Motherhood Out Loud,...

Though he did have a brief - very brief - stint on Broadway before Lemon Sky premiered in 1970 at midtown's Off-Broadway Playhouse Theatre, Lanford Wilson was still at that point regarded as a downtown playwright.  One of the leading scribes of the crew consisting predominantly of gay men who creat...

Tabloid theatre might be the best way of describing Dan Klores' The Wood, a drama that attempts hard-hitting, journalistic toughness in painting a somewhat nonobjective portrait of New York newspaper columnist Mike McAlary.  The author delivers a lot of ink-stained passion in his tale of a local ki...

This week I had my first experience with the joyful adult visual fantasia known as Arias With A Twist; a madcap collaboration between puppeteer/designer/director Basil Twist and cross-dressing chanteuse Joey Arias that first hit town three years ago. It's an eye-popping blast....

The First Ladies Project is a well-crafted satire written in the Second City style. It is interesting to note that three of the ensemble graduated the Second City Teen program. This sharpness is evident in moments such as Laura Bush's Stand-up routine and Lucretia Garfield's diphtheria-inspired rap...

Last season, playwright Richard Nelson invited us to spend election night 2010 at the Rhinebeck home of schoolteacher Barbara Apple and her aging uncle, Benjamin as her left-leaning sisters and brother gathered for dinner and conversation about family matters and the country's political climate. Ti...