Thom Geier — Theater Critic

Clarke’s resulting play, Bughouse, is a visually evocative but dramatically inert performance piece that touches on Darger’s troubled personal story, his penchant for self-isolation, and his fixations on Catholicism and threats to childhood innocence (which he often depicted with graphic violence and nudity). But the script by Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart) consists mostly of an undiagnosed schizophrenic’s stream of consciousness rants, interrupted by the occasional aural hallucination (mostly the voices of nuns and young girls).

Ziegler’s Antigone isn’t the same play you read in high school. It’s a far more urgent work that resurfaces one of Western literature’s first female revels, and gives her a new and vital sense of purpose.

Ziegler’s Antigone isn’t the same play you read in high school. It’s a far more urgent work that resurfaces one of Western literature’s first female revels, and gives her a new and vital sense of purpose.

Wallace Shawn’s best known collaboration with director André Gregory is the 1981 Louis Malle film My Dinner With André, in which the two denizens of the downtown arts scenes engage in a rambling philosophical discussion over dinner at the now-defunct Café des Artistes. Gregory, 91, is now directing the 82-year-old Shawn’s latest play, What We Did Before Our Moth Days, a three-act domestic drama that’s as wordy, erudite, and esoteric as its title.

Near the end, while we waited for their total distance to be tallied, the tuckered troupe launched into a re-creation of OK Go’s routine from the music video “Here We Go Again.” It was impressively perfect. Burnout Paradise is a real feat of endurance, for the dogged cast as well as the audience. Over time, I felt mostly exhausted by the sensory overload. And deeply sympathetic for performers willing to subject themselves to the requirements of this show eight times a week. Your mileage may vary.

While Bigfoot! seems to borrow from other musicals featuring misunderstood outsiders and political subtexts — Bat Boy, Toxic Avenger, and Urinetown all spring to mind as influences — the story here seems almost an afterthought. There’s a Saturday-morning cartoon quality to the plot and most of the characters, especially under the broad, subtlety-free direction of Danny Melford (who also handles the simple choreography). Some of the references, while consistently amusing, have a throwback quality. When Tam’s physician slaps Bigfoot’s passed-out mom to rouse her, she jolts upright and responds, “Are you a doctor or Ike Turner?” (Perhaps Ruffin didn’t want to offend more recent slap-happy celebrities such as Will Smith.) At another point, the doc compares the potential dangers of the oversize Bigfoot to “a drunk moose or a Kennedy brother.”

While Bigfoot! seems to borrow from other musicals featuring misunderstood outsiders and political subtexts — Bat Boy, Toxic Avenger, and Urinetown all spring to mind as influences — the story here seems almost an afterthought. There’s a Saturday-morning cartoon quality to the plot and most of the characters, especially under the broad, subtlety-free direction of Danny Melford (who also handles the simple choreography). Some of the references, while consistently amusing, have a throwback quality. When Tam’s physician slaps Bigfoot’s passed-out mom to rouse her, she jolts upright and responds, “Are you a doctor or Ike Turner?” (Perhaps Ruffin didn’t want to offend more recent slap-happy celebrities such as Will Smith.) At another point, the doc compares the potential dangers of the oversize Bigfoot to “a drunk moose or a Kennedy brother.”

The cast is consistently strong under Chay Yew’s direction, but I kept wishing that the characters and plot had been more deeply fleshed out so that we understood the message here. There are interesting ideas here, but Lin’s script at times seems undercooked and in other moments veers into spelling out ideas that would have more impact if they had been left unsaid.

While director Rory McGregor moves his cast nimbly around the wide wood-panel-lined stage that represents multiple locations in their on-again-off-again affair (designed by Scott Pask and lit by Stacey Derosier), he doesn’t bring much clarity to White’s challenging nonlinear script — which wallows in narrative confusion as it plunges both the audience and the characters into repeated bouts of alcoholic amnesia between some harrowing depictions of addiction at its worst.

Fans of Joyce will find much to savor here, and much to dissect. Newbies can get lost in the rhythms of the author’s language as well as the trickiness of the plot, which tends to drag in the overlong first act. (It pays to arrive early enough to download the plot synopsis produced for the show and shared via QR code outside the theater.) But this feels more like gloss than adaptation, an exercise that captures elements of the source material without ever standing on its own terms.

Despite the polished delivery by the barefoot cast, the story can get confusing. Aside from Kene’s character, who feels obliged to exit after accidentally killing a woman while driving drunk, you never really get a grasp on any of these people as individuals. Stephens’ script seems to have slipped into the uncanny valley itself, with fuzzy descriptions of the human experience that offer moments of piquant poetry before slipping back into generalities that are amplified by repeated use of the second person.

The storytelling can be herky-jerky and hard to follow in places for those unfamiliar with the material, and the songs seldom do much to advance the plot (and sometimes end abruptly or anticlimactically). Also, we meet a lot of girls — too many to keep track of, though they do blend beautifully in group choral numbers.

But instead of updating the material, or digging into the modern parallels in a story that’s all about religious hypocrisy and the gullibility of the masses, Hnath seems content to regurgitate the original beat for beat with only the most minor of adjustments. More disappointingly, Hnath is not a natural poet and his adaptation relies on a series of sing-song verses and half-rhymes (ages and changes, disciple and Bible) that tend to be more toward clunky than clever.

But instead of updating the material, or digging into the modern parallels in a story that’s all about religious hypocrisy and the gullibility of the masses, Hnath seems content to regurgitate the original beat for beat with only the most minor of adjustments. More disappointingly, Hnath is not a natural poet and his adaptation relies on a series of sing-song verses and half-rhymes (ages and changes, disciple and Bible) that tend to be more toward clunky than clever.

Kail and his design team have crafted a handsome production, with sturdy seamen shifting and stacking weathered wooden pallets around the stage between scenes and a giant steel beam first used as a saloon bar and then hoisted aloft to hover over the action like a ship’s mast or a giant sword of Damocles. (Christine Jones and Brett J. Banakis are credited with the scenography, with Natasha Katz’s lighting amid the occasional onset of fog by special effects designer Jeremy Chernick.) But the attempts at symbolism seem strained for a play as straightforward and muted as this one — where the characters manage to avoid the ravages of alcoholism or shipwreck or even death by gunshot despite the appearance of a pistol late in the show.

Still, it can be hard to make sense of the show’s central conceit — that these childhood buddies are only connecting in five-year increments when one or the other is in a moment of crisis — or to glean an overriding message that justifies the time we’re spending in the company of this star-crossed not-quite couple. Gruesome Playground Injuries mostly succeeds as an acting exercise, where the performers can throw themselves (sometimes literally) into showy recklessness.

Every now and then, an enchanting new musical classic comes along out of nowhere. Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York, which opened Thursday at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, is a modern musical romance that has the feel of an old-fashioned movie but also the look and sound of a story that could only take place in 2025.

Every now and then, an enchanting new musical classic comes along out of nowhere. Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York, which opened Thursday at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, is a modern musical romance that has the feel of an old-fashioned movie but also the look and sound of a story that could only take place in 2025.

Director Kenny Leon does what he can to tighten the pacing, but the script needs significant work to trim unnecessary scenes and sharpen the focus. Despite the sci-fi trappings, This World of Tomorrow is stuck in the dusty past, a time dripping in sentimentality and the possibility of a whirlwind romance with a person you only just met.

Finn’s tunes remain toe-tapping treats, and the whole cast throws themselves into the numbers with a youthful energy that suits their characters’ ages. Spelling Bee is the perfect antidote to these dreary anxiety-ridden times, and it’s worth settling down for a long, laughter-induced spell.

Like Teiresias, Merope understands that Oedipus’ world is about to implode — though Ickes smartly insures that no one character has the full picture of the family history until the elements leak out bit by bit. By the time that countdown clock hits zero, and the penny drops for both Oedipus and Jocasta, there is no turning back. The final scenes, as Strong and Manville wrestle with the full ramifications of their unwitting actions, unspool with a furious inevitability that is difficult to watch and impossible to look away. Ickes and his cast have achieved something truly remarkable, producing a classic that doesn’t feel like a revival at all. Oedipus may be the best play of the decade, and also the most contemporary.

Date: November 12, 2025 Author: Thom Geier 0 Comments Rajiv Joseph’s Archduke, a comedic retelling of the recruitment of the anarchist whose 1913 assassination of Austro-Hungarian ruler Franz Ferdinand triggered World War I, is like a contemporary version of a Shakespearean history play as filtered through Comedy Central’s Drunk History. Through episodes of offbeat jokes and over-the-top slapstick, Joseph brings a darkly humorous sensibility to a chapter in world history that we all probably think we know better than we do. The story centers on Gavrilo Princip (Jake Berne, wide-eyed and charming), the young Slavic anarchist who fired the fatal shots at the archduke and his wife, Sophie, in an attempt to rid Bosnia of rule by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In Joseph’s telling, though, Gavrilo and his two co-conspirators (Jason Sanchez and Adrien Rolet) are less true believers in the cause than accidental terrorists who are easy marks for recruitment to violence due to their less than flush circumstances. They’re unemployed, dim-witted virgins who feel hopeless in getting the attention of women, and they’ve all been given a fatal diagnosis of tuberculosis that spurs them to make a mark of any kind on the world while they still can. This makes them easy prey for a rogue military officer who needs some cannon fodder for his empire-toppling agenda. The brilliantly basso-voiced Patrick Page plays this svengali-like figure, nicknamed “Apis,” with a hilarious rhetorical flourish that’s equal parts drill sergeant, pompous professor, and cult leader. In many respects, Gavrilo and his comrades are not the best audience for Apis’ propaganda — more drawn to the prospect of a sumptuous meal (served by Kristine Nielsen with exaggerated gestures of domestic servitude) or even holding a gun or riding in a train to far-off cosmopolitan Sarajevo. archduke Patrick Page, Jason Sanchez, Adrien Rolet, Jake Berne, and Kristine Nielsen in ‘Archduke’ (Photo: Joan Marcus) Advertisement Joseph’s central insight is that the origins of terrorist cells — or even modern-day incels — can be located in the credulity of young men encountering persuasive older mentors blinding them to logic and offering a pathway to what they’ve long craved: acceptance, recognition, perhaps immortality. Or even just the prospect of a solid meal and the promise of long-overdue female companionship. When Sanchez’s Nedeljko first meets Gavrilo, he tellingly feigns knowledge of sex. “It’s like taking a bath with a bunch of rabbits,” he explains to his equally clueless new pal. “Feels soft and warm but also, ‘What am I doing here?'” In the drawn out second act, Nielsen’s Sladjana tones down the silliness to suggest to the young men that they need not actually go through with Apis’ plan to achieve their goals, that the comforts of their friendship and sense of mission may not outweigh the nagging questions they harbor about the violence of their assignment. Joining a group of terrorists may be soft and warm, but what are they actually doing here? By this point, Page has mostly disappeared and the comedic energy of the play dissipates as Joseph tries to corral his premise into a plausible if highly speculative ending. The script, reworked since its 2017 premiere in Los Angeles, still doesn’t entirely stick the landing. Director Darko Tresnjak, himself a native of Zemun, Serbia, where some of the action takes place, strikes a delicate balance between the absurdist humor and the play’s more philosophical ideas — and he deploys Alexander Dodge’s stylized turntable set, Linda Cho’s just-so costumes, and Matthew Richards’ lighting to excellent effect. Archduke is a diverting bit of alternate history, with some fine comic moments and an underlying message about how easy it can be to radicalize youth

But this Richard II emerges more as an exercise in style than substance, unable to justify why its 1980s glosses enhance our understanding of this story or these characters. “I have been studying how I may compare / This prison where I live unto the world,” Richard says in the opening and closing lines of the show. And Urie fills the lines with a kind of weary resignation that marks his approach to his drawn-out abdication in the second act. But this production fails to make clear how Richard himself is chiefly responsible for his incarcerated fate, the architect of his own misfortune. (And it has nothing to do with his prolonged smooches with a boy.)

You don’t have to build a musical around characters that the audience wants to root for, but it certainly helps. The most human-shaped figure on stage is Sofia, the devoted servant who keeps the household running and spends a lot of her free time in the luxurious playhouse that the Siegel offspring stopped using years ago. Butiu gives Sofia some genuine dimensions as a woman who backburnered her own family to raise other people’s kids, but she never gets a song of her own to make her more than an accessory. (Stephen DeRosa and Isabel Keating, meanwhile, are wasted as Jackie’s salt-of-the-earth parents.)

But aside from Milo’s off-handed confession there are no other hints that this is in any way a sex cult, and Thomas is easily shut down by others when he veers off into lecture mode. Mostly, this seems to be a group of well-meaning hippies muddling through life together. But muddling is not the stuff of most dramas — nor a sufficient reason to spend so much time with these well-intentioned strangers, especially after the play establishes some lofty stakes that wind up being squandered rather than fully developed.