Kallan Dana’s new play Racecar Racecar Racecar is an original tale of a daughter-dad adventure in which character is tested, quite literally, if preposterously, during a cross-country road trip. Directed by Sarah Blush, and making its world premiere at A.R.T/New York Theatres, this surreal one-act play packs an emotional punch.
It’s impossible to discuss Pen Pals, Michael Griffo’s new two-hander at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, without first bringing up A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Love Letters consisted of nothing more than two actors reading letters to each other, recounting an epistolary romance spanning almost a half-century. It was so popular because, first of all, it was easy to produce: small set, small cast, and celebrity actors who could jet into town, get onstage, and read the text without having to memorize anything.
What does it take to turn an extraordinary Shakespearean tragedy into an extraordinary production? The first step is vision. King Lear, with Kenneth Branagh in the title role, reflects the artistic vision and collaborative muscle of a directing triumvirate—Branagh, Lucy Skillbeck, and Rob Ashford. They have reduced the Bard’s three-hour-plus saga to two hours with no intermission and cast current and former Royal Academy of Dramatic Art students to bring new energy to a complex story. This series of theatrical risks yields cohesive and riveting theater.
Michelle Kholos Brooks writes powerful dramas about salient issues. Together with director Sarah Norris, she has created a viscerally, emotionally gripping tableau of remembrance. With maximum impact, Kholos Brooks’s Room 1214 hits gun violence out of the ballpark.
In The Blood Quilt by Katori Hall, four half-sisters gather a few weeks after their mother’s funeral for an annual rite of stitching a quilt. As they congregate in their childhood home, the quartet of archetypal characters rehash old conflicts with their different personalities and views of tradition.
Near the opening of Hyprov: Improv Under Hypnosis, Colin Mochrie refers to himself as “international comic icon,” but if you haven’t ever seen What’s My Line, Anyway? you might be skeptical of his sweeping claim. (Mochrie’s wry delivery suggests that the description is a bit of a spoof.) Nevertheless, the Canadian native is definitely the funnier half of Hyprov, which combines two disciplines into something unusual and raucously entertaining.
Audiences at the Broadway Comedy Club are in for some head-scratching and knee-slapping as the cast of On The Spot improvises and sings its way to creating a zany new musical performance every Monday night. The cast, made up of five singers, four improv actors and one pianist work together to create an entertaining, eclectic and somewhat perplexing hour and a half of comedy and cabaret.
Sam Gamgee, in the movie Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, righteously declares that "there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.” Good theater is also worth fighting for, and you may very well find yourself battling to get a ticket to see Fly, You Fools! Presented by Recent Cutbacks, it is currently playing Friday evenings at Peoples Improv Theater in Manhattan.
Back when I was in high school, my cousin and I made up an impromptu jazz-age musical called Loser: The Musical, wherein a lowly, poor broom boy (based on a broom boy at the local Dunkin' Donuts whom my cousin and her sister insisted I had a crush on — don't ask) falls in love with a rich girl he stumbles upon one day. As one could expect, there were cheesy numbers galore, with inclusion — of course — of the musical's title theme, "Loser," which our hero would sing forlornly as the rich girl drove away with her Also-Rich-But-Also-A-Jerk fiance.
The cleverly titled Tail! Spin! is only tangentially related to a deadly airplane maneuver. Think of “tail” as a euphemism for sex, and “spin” as the result, and you’ll be close to the subject of the sketches satirizing four politicians whose sex scandals were once hot but now are receding from memory. "Tailspin" might be applied to what happened to their careers as a result.
