OFF-OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

Since its first publication in 1843, Charles Dickens' holiday classic, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, has been adapted countless times for various stages, screens and pages, but undoubtedly the most authentic presentations of the story of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghosts who assist in his transformat...

Fans of David Bowie's music - and especially his lyrics - should immediately stop reading this review and book tickets to see the very limited run of Where Are We Now.  Then come back and continuing reading!  With a $26 top ticket price, this is one of the greatest cabaret values in New York City....

When a story is as woven in people's collective consciousness as A Christmas Carol is, how does one go about making their adaptation stand out amongst countless others? It turns out, all you have to do is be J. Max Baker. A one man retelling of A Christmas Carol is far from an easy feat, and Baker t...

In Sean Gorski's excellent scenic design, an inflatable parrot is perched on the back of a lounge chair.  More parrots hang from the eave of the house.  One of them, tellingly, has deflated and collapsed onto the gutter's downspout.  Three empty beer bottles and two empty Proseccos sit on the tab...

An Italian family in the midst of a celebration, thrown into disarray by a missing prized truffle, looming money issues and an unsolved murdera??it really can't get better than this, am I right? What sounds like the next great television drama is given a musical flare and thus becomes a production t...

A close friend recently told me there was no cure for climate change.  Too many people are on the planet.  He theorized the solution was to eliminate two-thirds of the world's population.  Ebenezer Scrooge also shares the same sentiment.  If the sick and downtrodden cannot survive then they will...

Dark, deep, mysterious and moving, Near to the Wild Heart echoes the voice and valor of the award-winning 1943 novel by Jewish-Brazilian author Clarice Lispector. Like the digital aquatic imagery that often spans the upstage perimeter, the play ebbs and flows through one woman's interior and exterio...

Christmas is fully represented on the stage in the small Teatro Círculo Theater.  All is not quite normal though.  On the left side of the stage there is a decorated tree with presents underneath.  The same thing is duplicated on the right side except this group hangs upside down from the ceilin...

As creatively ambitious as it is confounding, THE WHITES illuminates a race-inverted space where Black is white, the Whites are 'black' and...vice versa? Visually, narratively and dramatically, this play is far from subtle; familial archetypes and societal stereotypes collide, challenging us to reco...

Under the brilliant direction of Judith Feingold, with an exclusive three-performance run at the NuBox Theater (at the John DeSotelle Studio) in Hell's Kitchen, Cocaine is such an unexpectedly powerful piece that brings out the reality of addiction amidst the love of two young people, overcome by th...

Presented by Two Tough Broads, directed by Joe John Battista and now in performances at the historic Theater for the New City, A Life In the Rye is truly an inspirational piece of theater that not only brings new life to J.D. Salinger's own story, but does so in a way that brings such dimensionality...

Truman Capote interviewed Marlon Brando in 1957.  The legendary actor was in Japan filming Sayonara.  Hilariously, we overhear one of the movie's sales pitches.  They are using 'real Japanese actors.'  This conversation is one level of the multi-media piece BrandoCapote.  On the flip side, this...

Presented by Little Shadow Productions and Art Farm, and with music by Emmy Award-winning Paul Rudolph, ALL HALLOWS EVE is an immersive experience that compels its audience to adopt the belief of a child - to open up its collective mind and believe in something whose existence cannot be simply expla...

Is playwright Cat Miller in possession of an oversized blender?  For her play The Hope Hypothesis, she tosses in Alice in Wonderland, a Kafkaesque tale, absurdist comedy, a spy thriller, soap opera histrionics and a deep state government mystery all together.  She turns the dial to frappe because ...

In Eric Fallen's timely AMERICAN FABLES, all is fair in love and war as battle lines are drawn in five taut morality tales....

Directors Austin Pendleton and Peter Bloch have brought a more chilling atmosphere to the Glass Menagerie at The Wild Project. Reuniting with Matt de Rogatis, the directors have chosen a more Wes Craven-themed approach to Tennessee Williams infamous script....

With a certain and subdued beauty, NOTES ON MY MOTHER'S DECLINE softens the blow that expectations, memory and loss deal to a contemporary mother/son relationship. Even as vivid descriptions of remembered sights, smells, tastes and textures fill their liminal space, a void of grief remains....

Off Broadway enthusiasts are increasingly adding the tag South Broadway to denote the fact that first rate productions are being mounted by creative and savvy theater owners in their audience friendly state of the art venues in South Florida. The Wick Theatre In Boca Raton is one of the newest and ...

Written/performed by Valerie David and directed by Padraic Lillis and Maris Heller, THE PINK HULK is just about to finish its run at the 14th Street Y. Valerie's one-woman show was accepted into 26 different festivals in both the U,S. and Europe over the course of 2 1/2 years, and has received quite...

In NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY, Chad Beckim shows how a young woman's addiction to opioids affects not only her, but those who seek to help her. Impeded by her own doubts and insecurities, in a town where people are admired for their efforts to leave, the downward spiral of her life pulls in those who had...

'It's selfish to assume nature blooms just for you.' The poetic monologue which opens Of the Woman Came the Beginning of Sin and Through Her We All Die is the perfect tone-setter for Lily Houghton's latest production....

Written by Dann Berg and Avital Asuleen (Director/Choreographer), THE FLOORSHOW intersperses song-and-dance numbers into the dramatization of the personal and professional hurdles that an all-female performance troupe faces in 1951 New York City. Moving between onstage and backstage at The Gilded Pa...

You might call John Kevin Jones the 'resident author' of East 4th Street's 1832 landmark Merchant's House Museum, though not in the traditional sense....

Immersive Production I CAN'T SEE Frights and Delights Manhattan...

Director Lauren Hlubny takes the idea of violence and molds it into something theatrically beautiful with her play Thoughts and Prayers, produced by Danse Theatre Surreality and now in performances at TADA! Youth Theatre....