OFF-OFF-BROADWAY THEATER REVIEWS

When I posted a short reaction to BREEDERS on Facebook, a friend commented: So the play compares gay men to hamsters!? No, but Dan Giles traces, in parallel, the lives of a gay couple expecting the birth of a baby via a surrogate, and the lives of a bickering hamster couple expecting pup, to pro...

Set in modern-day Red Bank, Tennessee, PETIE is essentially a Greek tragedy and like the heroes of those classics, Bonnie is a sad portrait of proud thoughtlessness that corrodes over self-inflicted loathing....

Somewhere in the second act of BLOOD BOUNDARY there is an interesting play to be found with alert performances and a powerful storyline that seamlessly resolves. Of course one has to sit through the long slog of act one's 'exposition mountain' to get to there....

This simple folk tale focuses on falling in love, taking on responsibility, and learning how to fly. Told through fantastic music, a clever use of masks, and puppetry, BEFORE THE SUN AND MOON casts a spell of enchantment across the entire audience....

Picture four people in a room, possessing just short of enough free will to be there but knowing that they can walk out if the mood strikes them. Four actors who base their lives on the truth of the untruth, forced to write a constitution applicable to all the actual people they have played - people...

Like it or hate it, Yelp is an undeniable force in American culture. Like Google, it's become a verb, as in, 'I Yelped the restaurant that gave my reservation away!,' or 'I'm going to Yelp the mechanic who installed brakes instead of a timing belt!'Yelp reviews can go viral, as with the recent post ...

Given her distinguished career that includes such significant works at PAINTING CHURCHES, COASTAL DISTURBANCES and PRIDE'S CROSSING, a new play by Tina Howe is certainly a noteworthy event....

In Martin Denton, Martin Denton, now in performances at the Kraine Theater over on East 4th, a tag team of mother and son tell the tale of their almost haphazardly formed theater lives with the grace and pomp of any engaging storyteller; you would think they actually had the entire thing planned out...

While it's not unexpected to have the title character of a musical based on Henry Fielding's infamously bawdy 1749 novel "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" be introduced to the audience while enjoying the afterglow of a lusty time with an agreeable lass, what's a bit surprising at first about B...

Written and directed by Emmy Award winner Eric Maierson and now in performances at Tom Noonan's Paradise Factory Theater, Reprise arrives for its World Premiere and packs quite a punch in the brief hour it takes to get through the entire ordeal. I say that with the utmost appreciation of how much of...

Although the show has officially ended, the curtain closed, the beautiful coloratura no longer reaching the heavens, the likes of Giovanni the Fearless are still very much alive in the hearts of audiences fortunate enough to see this whimsical musical comedy. I describe it as such because of the emo...

What we have here is a masterfully crafted show called Divorce Party, something so wacky and farfetched but so rooted in the inward and outward complexities of life (as are so many absurd things) that it encapsulates life as we acknowledge it to be, but are not always so eager or able to share with ...

ANGRY YOUNG MAN, a British play by Ben Woolf, is both entertaining and puzzling. Yuri, a surgeon from a country that isn't disclosed, arrives in London a day ahead of an interview. Since he doesn't realize how far central London is from Stansted Airport, the taxi ride takes almost all of his money, ...

When a man gets into a taxi, inebriated and tired, and is convinced that the driver kidnapped him because he refused to pay an exorbitant fare, is his truth greater than the driver's testimony of racial slurs and attempted murder? When there is no other witness accept one's memory, these two men mus...

Omega Kids is now being performed at Access Theater through Sunday, March 25th. Written by Obie Award-winner Noah Mease and directed by Jay Stull, it is an insightful view into the feelings of two young men....

In the one-woman show TURNING PAGE, Angelica Page takes on perhaps the role of her career - that of her real-life mother, Geraldine Page, who was theater, Hollywood and Actors Studio royalty. A daunting role, to be sure. Angelica says at the top of the piece that her mother asked her to see that her...

Written by Jean Ann Douglass and directed by Jess Chayes, The Providence of Neighboring Bodies comes to Theater 511 (in association with Ars Nova) for its World Premiere in New York. Featuring a powerhouse cast of only three and a truly thought-provoking plot that gets more intricate the more I thi...

When it comes to theater, there's immersive and there's immersive. Siobhan O'Loughlin's BROKEN BONE BATHTUB is immersive in a literal sense: the Brooklyn-based playwright sits in a bathtub full of bubbles as she tells the story of her most severe bicycle accident, though the play is really about the...

Directed by Aimee Todoroff and Tonya Pinkins and now in performances at the Gloria Maddox Theatre, Visionary Voices begins with Susan Glaspell's Trifles, followed by Marita Bonner's Exit: An Illusion and ending with Glaspell's The People - three wonderful plays that are more engaging and poignant in...

It would be nice to be able take in The Wooster Group's intriguing docu-theatre piece, THE TOWN HALL AFFAIR, as a look at the grotesquely blatant brand sexism of nearly 50 years ago that we have since outgrown. Sadly, this glimpse at a carnival-like event disguised as a serious debate on the subject...

After establishing himself as resident doorman, stage manager and sex slave at the Caffe Cino, the historic Cornelia Street birthplace of Off-Off Broadway and America's gay theatre movement, Robert Patrick summoned up the courage to join the ranks of the venue's resident staff of playwrights (Lanfor...

In a world with so many peddling-and profiting from--faux inspiration, SILENT NO MORE: A THEATRICAL DOCUMENTARY offers the real thing. Directed by Michele Christie, Ed.D., Executive Director and Founder of No Limits, SILENT NO MORE is by turns heartbreaking and hilarious as it traces the struggles a...

New York theatre stuck it to the patriarchy this year with healthy-for-the-soul offerings like A 24 Decade History of Popular Music, O, Earth, The Wolves, and more!...

Adapted by Matt Opatrny and directed/choreographed by Jessica Burr, the eleven-member troupe Blessed Unrest recently opened A Christmas Carol at the New Ohio Theatre. This "theatre for the adventurous" comprised of a diverse ensemble that brings new and bold productions to NY audiences, brings a uni...

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...