All in Review
“Three Wise Guys” is a charming new comedy based on Prohibition-era short stories by Damon Runyon, featuring a lovable cast of thieves, bootleggers, socialites, and chorus gals on a zany, Christmas Eve romp. Cleverly designed, it offers light, low-budget, fun fare guaranteed to deliver laughs, smiles, and a carefree chance to escape for a little while.
“Amy and the Orphans”, a new comedy by Lindsey Ferrentino based on her family, both features a title character and stars an actor with Down syndrome, an important milestone in New York theatre. The play, which examines the relationships among three disparate, adult siblings and explores the meaning of “family” and “home”, is stunted and static in character and plot development. I sense the playwright is too close to the material.
In Taylor Trensch, “Dear Evan Hansen” has welcomed a new star who not only delivers a superb and confident performance in a behemoth, marathon title part, but also reinvigorates the whole production. Mr. Trensch is, in a word: terrific.
A roundup look at three plays that opened recently Off-Broadway. I highly recommend the Vineyard Theatre's striking "The Amateurs" and Signature Theatre's superb "At Home at the Zoo", but suggest skipping MCC Theater's "Relevance".
“Black Light”, an incandescent evening of song and story, stars performance artist Daniel Alexander Jones as his alter-ego, the enigmatic cabaret creation Jomama Jones; rich in meaning and message, its politics pointed but poetic, “Black Light” is a wickedly funny, painfully revelatory, and poignantly beautiful exploration of race, identity, gender, power, history, change, and community that is perfectly calibrated for these turbulent times. Catch this show if you can.
Nearly a year into its run, “Hello, Dolly!” is buoyantly better, brighter, and tighter than on opening night. Bernadette Peters gives a stellar, steadier, and more grounded performance as Dolly Levi, alongside replacements Victor Garber, Charlie Stemp, and Molly Griggs—and Gavin Creel and Kate Baldwin, and the ensemble, are better than ever. This is the best musical comedy on Broadway. If you haven't seen it, get tickets now; if you have seen it, it's worth checking back in.
“America is Hard to See” by Life Jacket Theatre Company is a new documentary play with music that explores the lives of a community of child sex offenders in Florida, testing the limits of our capacity for empathy and forgiveness. Deeply unsettling, surprisingly humane, and ultimately uplifting, it is a powerful play that provokes more questions than answers, and is guaranteed to leave you changed.
Two songs from "Mack & Mabel" steal the show at Encores! 25th anniversary concert “Hey, Look Me Over!”—an original concert pulling overtures, songs, and scenes from nine different, lesser-known musicals—overshadowing middling material from the other eight musicals celebrated. A fun experiment after 25 years, hopefully Encores! sticks to full concerts of single shows at a time in the future.
Eve Ensler’s “In the Body of the World” is an exquisite poem of a solo performance that connects one woman’s journey with uterine cancer to the plight of women worldwide and the very devastation of our earth. Crisp, funny, devastating, and transcendent, this play is a must see.
“Hangmen”, a hilarious dark comedy about vengeance, packs the top-notch twists, violence, and laughs we’ve come to expect from Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. Superbly acted and directed, this sold out limited run will likely end up on Broadway, and for good reason. See it if you can.
Trailblazing experimental African American playwright Adrienne Kennedy’s powerful new play, “He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box”, pieces together an anatomy of interracial young love amidst 1940s Georgia, stewing in the horrific inescapability of history, the tragedy of racism, and contradictions of life in the Jim Crow South. Dense, quick, sentimental, angry, and mysterious, this is one new work from a legend worth checking out.
Greg Pierce’s new play “Cardinal” is bland and platitudinous, offering a superficial patina of hot-button discussion about economic and social change with little resolution or ideological point of view; too comfortable and vague, it falls back on easy tropes and says little that is new. Skip this one.
