OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

Don't let the abundance of cuteness fool you. Isabella Rossellini's LINK LINK CIRCUS is one of the brainiest shows in town....

Though Shakespeare's The Tempest commences with a spectacular act of revenge, director Laurie Woolery stresses in her program notes for Mobile Unit's thoroughly enrapturing new production her intention to highlight the play's moments of forgiveness, leaving audiences to ponder 'what it means to use ...

The Little Mermaid. Thumbalina. The Ugly Duckling. The Princess and the Pea. The Little Match Girl. It's hard to overestimate just how much the prolific writer Hans Christian Anderson contributed to our childhoods and to our current pop culture. The Ensemble for the Romantic Century's HANS CHRISTIAN...

There are two apartments across the hall from each other in The Bigot.  In the messy one on the right, Bill O'Reilly's book Killing Reagan is perched on the couch.  Bottles of pills are sitting on a tray.  On the left is a much neater, more modern home.  Two young lesbians have just moved in aft...

If you're like this male theatre critic, you'll spend the first twenty minutes or so of Halley Feiffer's The Pain of My Belligerence wondering why the woman at the center of the story is putting up with the atrocious immature behavior of the guy who's her arrogant and disrespectful dinner date. If y...

Playwright Penny Jackson packs generations of family drama into this one-act 90-minute "jukebox" play, which has some memorable moments, lots of laughs, but an all-too-familiar feel where love, loss and liquor seep into every scene of Irish turmoil....

The US premiere of Killing Time, written by Zoe Mills and directed by Antony Eden is now on stage at 59E59 Theaters as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival of shows. This well-crafted dark comedy keenly addresses end of life issues. It stars the playwright, Zoe Mills and her mother, the acclaimed...

Have some fun and see the US premiere of 'Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain,' a hilarious and inventive play now being performed at 59E59 Theaters through Sunday, May 12....

'Would you rule justly?' the ancient Greek philosopher who serves as title character of Tim Blake Nelson's drama Socrates asks a fellow citizen who claims he would do a better job than the current political leaders. 'I'd rule to make Athens great,' answers the metal-craftsman, whose support of the c...

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For over a dozen years, the brilliant director/choreographer Austin McCormick and the intriguing troupe of artists he's gathered to create and expand Company XIV have been luring audiences to witness productions that evolve classic tales we've loved as children (The Nutcracker, Cinderella, Snow Whit...

An empathy coach is hired to hold workshops at a debt collection agency. Sounds like comedy gold to this reviewer, who has been on the receiving end of phone calls from high-pressure, goal-oriented professionals suggesting I try borrowing money from friends in order to not 'feel like a deadbeat.'...

Wake up! Bill Posley has a stunner of a story to tell, and although comedy may not resolve his existential crisis, it's a trip well worth taking with him at Soho Playhouse. Witty, fearless and 'woke as f***,' Posley describes (and often reenacts) parts of his lived experience as a biracial man in se...

The New York premiere of 'I Carry Your Heart,' written by Georgette Kelly and directed Cate Caplin is now being performed at 59E59 Street Theaters. This important show shines a light the subject of organ donation from multiple perspectives....

Sincerely, Oscar is a meandering mindbender where two's company, three's a crowd, and thirty songs take us on jazzed-up journey through Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, State Fair, Allegro, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. Intriguing conceptually but lopsided musically, the clun...

'A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,' says Paul Rober, Stanford Economist. I doubt he had Maddie Corman in mind, but his statement certainly applies to her one woman show 'Accidentally Brave.' Written and performed by Ms. Corman, this story is something no one would ever want to experience. She d...

In June of 1937, the United States government padlocked New York's Maxine Elliot Theatre and sent security guards to prevent the performance of a new musical, but the unknown leading lady Olive Stanton courageously fought her fears and led an act of defiance that made headlines the morning after ope...

Perhaps if Jacobean playwright John Webster had access to hard-driving techno music and live-stream video technology, his blood-soaked revenge drama The White Devil might have had a successful 1612 premiere at London's Red Bull Theatre, as performed by the resident company, Queen Anne's Men....

Like a sad, lonely island, depleted of its bounty, a single floor of the offices of Lehman Brothers is revealed, isolated, lofted above the endless business of a bustling Manhattan. It is empty, save for the boxes of files stacked on top of each other after declaring bankruptcy in 2008 and the memor...

Judy Holliday, the iconic star of stage and screen, comes alive at 59E59 Theaters in show that will keep you enthralled from the first minute to the last. The New York premiere of 'Smart Blonde,' written by Willy Holtzman and directed by Peter Flynn, stars a fabulous cast of four....

'Today, we give to the dirt of the earth, our beloved brother and friend, Brother Righttocomplain,' Father Freeman announces to the audience at commencement of Jordan E. Cooper's aggressively satirical surrealist vaudeville of African-American experiences, AIN'T NO MO'....

'I should let you know I am not okay,' playwright/performer Maddie Corman advises the audience at the outset of her completely absorbing solo piece ACCIDENTALLY BRAVE. 'This isn't one of those shows where I'm here to tell you that I was okay and then I wasn't okay but now I am okay.'...

'These words might be more offensive now than they were back then,' ponders playwright/actor Ronnie Marmo in the guise of one of 20th Century America's most controversial artists in his (mostly) solo performance, I'M NOT A COMEDIAN... I'M LENNY BRUCE....

One of the quirky charms of the musicals that packed Broadway houses during early decades of the 20th Century, was the practice of allowing a stray remark that has nothing to do with anything that's going on to serve as the cue for a novelty song that has nothing to do with anything that's going on....

And as we look out at what the country has become in recent years, and how social media has illuminated what we have always been, it's necessary to have artists like Suzan-Lori Parks around to keep us thinking, and talking, about what we can aspire to....