James Wilson

,

Scarlett Dreams

,
Scarlett Dreams

In addition to introducing the word robot to the English language, Czech writer Karel Čapek’s 1920 sci-fi drama R.U.R. depicted a dystopian world in which scientifically manufactured laborers gradually eradicate humans. The play perfectly captured the anxieties of the burgeoning Machine Age and was a big hit on Broadway in 1922. S. Asher Gelman’s Scarlett Dreams attempts to tap into similar uneasiness as the former Information Age settles into the current Age of Intelligence. With the meteoric advancement and sudden ubiquity of artificial intelligence (AI), the play suggests that it may be just a matter of time when people will be controlled by digital avatars, and the difference between reality and virtual reality (VR) will become purely conjectural.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Merry Me

,
Merry Me

Hansol Jung’s irreverent new comedy Merry Me is a dramaturgical mash-up that borrows freely from Euripides’s Iphigenia in Aulis, William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Along the way it also includes allusions to (naming just a few) poems by Sappho, Fifty Shades of Grey, and The L Word. The conceit is clever and ambitious, but the elements rarely cohere. To the credit of a hardworking and resourceful cast, though, there are some funny moments, but much of the merriment seems forced rather than breezily effortless.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
, ,

Days of Wine and Roses

, ,
Days of Wine and Roses

In Days of Wine and Roses, the new musical based on JP Miller’s 1958 teleplay and Blake Edwards’s 1962 Warner Bros. film, the central characters introduce themselves in song as “two people stranded at sea.” Even when offered lifelines, as the boozy, destructive duo often are, they respond like drowning victims, clawing and scratching, threatening to bring their rescuers down with them. With a book by Craig Lucas and a score by Adam Guettel, Days of Wine and Roses presents a searing and sobering portrait of the devastating costs of addiction.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Last summer the Ruth Stage production of Tennessee Williams’s 1955 Pulitzer Prize–winning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened at Off-Broadway’s Theatre at St. Clement’s. The critical responses were uniformly mixed-to-negative, and OffOffOnline’s Charles Wright described it as a “lumbering version” of the play under Joe Rosario’s direction. Now in a “re-engagement,” as the publicity materials describe the current iteration, the production has been substantially recast, and there are a few directorial modifications. While this Cat 2.0 still lumbers, there is a noticeable improvement along with glimmers of fresh insight into the mendacious, caustic, and fiercely combative characters who populate Williams’s Mississippi Delta estate.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

A Delicate Balance

,
A Delicate Balance

Edward Albee’s 1966 Pulitzer Prize–winning A Delicate Balance begins in the evening and ends in the morning. Hidden terrors emerge and then suddenly disappear in a drama that could be titled Long Night’s Journey into Day. As one character says, “Darkness still frightens us,” and “when the daylight comes again . . . comes order with it.” In Jack Cummings III’s slyly off-kilter production, presented in partnership with Transport Group and the National Asian American Theatre Company, the play begins in total light and ends in complete darkness. The terrors do not dissipate at dawn but linger into a new day.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Under the Dragon’s Tail

,
Under the Dragon’s Tail

On the lam criminals, a would-be king living as an exiled stoner, an untethered cosmonaut, and a pair of lovers sorting through the detritus of a terminated relationship—are the characters populating Isaac Byrne’s Under the Dragon’s Tail. Byrne also directs the quartet of one-acts that are not always in perfect harmony, but as a quadriptych, they intriguingly show the ways in which elements of mythology, metaphor, and symbolism can give order to the chaos of the contemporary world.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Belfast Girls

,
Belfast Girls

In the 1840s, famine devastated Ireland, and approximately 1 million people died during the period known as the Great Hunger (An Gorta Mór in Irish). Another 2 million emigrated from the comparatively small island nation, and as a result, by 1852, the country had lost approximately 25 percent of its total population. Jaki McCarrick’s Belfast Girls, currently running at Irish Repertory Theatre, examines the effect the famine had on women in particular and explores its devastating impact on the poorest of the poor in Ireland.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Which Way to the Stage

,
Which Way to the Stage

Anyone who has walked by a Broadway theater’s stage door after a show will immediately recognize the central characters of Ana Nogueira’s Which Way to the Stage. They are the ones clutching a copy of Playbill (usually protected in plastic) in one hand and waving a Sharpie in the other. As they wait for autographs, they fervently debate the most pressing issues of the day, such as who should play Mame in the next Broadway revival; which Glinda in Wicked even comes close to Kristin Chenoweth’s performance; and, for heaven’s sake, will Rob Marshall ever make Follies into a movie?

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Bloom

,
Bloom

Alfred Hitchcock famously described the basis of suspense as a situation in which there is a ticking time bomb under a table. The audience knows it is only a matter of minutes in which the bomb will explode, and they sit on the edge of their seats in anticipation of the outcome. Applying this principle, Marco Antonio Rodriguez initially establishes a veritable minefield in his new play Bloom, currently running at the IATI Theater. In the totalitarian world in which the play is set, a mother has been ordered to kill her son, and if she does not do so within precisely one hour, unimaginable horrors will follow.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post

Tambo & Bones

Tambo & Bones

When the lights came up at the end of Dave Harris’s disorienting Tambo & Bones, my companion asked me, “Am I real?” The satirical play teasingly calls attention to the artifice of theater and performance while emphasizing “fake-ass” set pieces, “fake-ass” backstories, and “fake-ass” racial identities. Even the composition of the audience at Playwrights Horizons seems to be fabricated. I wasn’t so sure I could give my friend an answer.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Selling Kabul

,
Selling Kabul

Selling Kabul, Sylvia Khoury’s play currently running at Playwrights Horizons, is significant and timely. Although written in 2015, the drama’s focus on the collateral damage of the pullout of U.S. forces in Afghanistan is even more urgent in light of President Biden’s complete withdrawal three months ago. Significant, timely, and urgent do not, however, necessarily make for great theater. To its credit, Selling Kabul does not minimize the political and ideological concerns, but it offers an impressively riveting, suspenseful, and deeply moving portrayal of four complex individuals caught up in the sweep of national turmoil.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories

,
Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories

The Mint Theater Company has once again returned to excavating the long-forgotten dramatic works of Miles Malleson, a 20th-century British actor, playwright, and screenwriter. Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories presents a pair of one-act dramas based on short stories by the Russian literary giants and adapted by Malleson. Audience members with passing familiarity of works by Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy will surely not expect to see a rom-com double bill, and yet the plays reflect the authors’ depths of compassion and devotion to social and spiritual uplift.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Stew

,
Stew

Nearly two years ago Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, which revolves around a high-stakes family dinner party, opened at Soho Rep’s theater on Walker Street. The devastating play compelled audiences to examine their attitudes toward race and class in the United States and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. Currently playing in the same theater (presented not by Soho Rep but by Page 73), Zora Howard’s Stew also centers on the stressful preparation of a meal while addressing issues confronting African Americans, particularly women, in the 21st century. Stew does not have the raw power of its predecessor, but in its assault on the senses, the play is ultimately unnerving.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
, , , ,

BrandoCapote

, , , ,
BrandoCapote

The setting of BrandoCapote, the multimedia performance piece currently playing at the Tank, is a room at the Miyako Hotel in Kyoto, Japan. It is the location in which Truman Capote interviewed Marlon Brando in 1957 when the star was filming Sayonara. The play hopscotches from 1957 to 2004, the year Brando died, and the hotel also represents, as the program explains, purgatory.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Round Table

,
Round Table

Liba Vaynberg’s Round Table is a small play with huge aspirations. Focusing on a pair of nerdy lovers who meet through an online dating app, Vaynberg’s work is at heart a sentimental and sweet romantic comedy. Interspersed throughout, however, are scenes inspired by the legend of King Arthur as well as monologues that break the fourth wall to address heady quandaries about unrequited love, self-idealization, and mortality. To the credit of the winning cast and fleet direction, the intimate production at 59E59 Theaters does not collapse under its own ungainliness.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Native Son

,
Native Son

Describing the internal conflict resulting from being an African American in a white-dominated society, W. E. B. Du Bois famously stated, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” The fragmented black identity is a guiding motif in Nambi Kelley’s theatricalized Native Son, currently running in repertory with Measure for Measure at the Duke on 42nd Street. Adapted from Richard Wright’s 1940 novel, this version eschews the socially realistic approach of previous stage and film treatments and thrusts the audience into a 90-minute expressionistic fever dream.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Barabbas

,
Barabbas

The premise of Barabbas, Will T. F. Carter’s new play currently in production at the Theater for the New City, is certainly intriguing. Set in a Peruvian prison during a period of insurgency and guerrilla warfare, the drama uses the story of Barabbas and Jesus to explore topics such as self-preservation, personal sacrifice and forgiveness. Unfortunately, the drama, which centers on the Sendero Luminoso (or Shining Path) revolutionaries in 1980s Peru, never ignites any sparks.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Dropping Gumballs on Luke Wilson

,
Dropping Gumballs on Luke Wilson

In 2000 Rob Ackerman made an impressive debut with Tabletop, a play about the cutthroat world of television commercials. Centered around a dictatorial director hell-bent on the perfect close-up of a fruit drink topped with a swirl, the play raised a number of issues about art, commerce, and workplace politics. Ackerman’s newest work, Dropping Gumballs on Luke Wilson, in an excellent production by Working Theater, serves as a companion piece to Tabletop. Also set in a television-commercial sound studio, Gumballs satirically reveals the moral compromises individuals make when confronted with artistic, economic, or personal intimidation.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
, ,

God of Marz

, ,
God of Marz

God of Marz, Rachel Shaw’s new play presented by Red Planet Theater Company, includes a warning upfront. A voice-over eschews the usual no-photos and no-cellphones reminder and (ungrammatically) informs the audience that “nothing the characters say or do does in any way reflect the views of the author, actors, directors, stage managers, costume designers, or the venue of this production. Some may find the material offensive and, if so, please leave quietly with no regrets.” Aside from the assumption that the play then does reflect the views of the lighting and scenic designers, for instance, some audience members might harbor an expectant thrill of an inflammatory evening at the theater. Alas, that’s not the case.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
, , ,

Madame Lynch

, , ,
Madame Lynch

Eliza Lynch is Paraguay’s version of Eva Perón, Argentina’s famous class-climbing first lady. Madame Lynch, as she was known, was born in Ireland, emigrated with her family to France during the Irish Potato Famine (1845–49), and became a highly admired courtesan. In 1845 she met General Francisco Solano López Carrillo, who later became president of Paraguay, and she became the country’s most controversial de facto first lady. (The pair never married.) Once reviled by Paraguayans but now celebrated, the self-named “Empress of Paraguay” is the basis for the Drunkard’s Wife production of Madame Lynch, which is subtitled a “spectacle with music and dancing.”

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post