Mama I’m a Big Girl Now!, the new musical entertainment at New World Stages, seems so eager to race to the exclamation point that it’s even missing a comma. The show wants to spread exuberance, excitement, and joy. It mostly succeeds.
It may be an overgeneralization, but let’s put it out there: In stage comedies, the more the cast laughs at its own purportedly hilarious exploits, the less the audience does. The onstage hollers and whoops are frequent and loud in The Z Team, Jeff and Jacob Foy’s workplace yuk-fest at Theatre Row, and while some of the audience seemed to enjoy it, those seated in E1 and E2 barely cracked a smile.
Loneliness and pandemic: two words that soared in usage in 2020 and 2021, when the COVID lockdowns kept people apart from their friends, family and regular activities. That pandemic is not the one playwright Olivia Haller references in the title Loneliness Was a Pandemic. Her occasionally thoughtful but not fully engaging drama (in which the word pandemic is never said) is concerned with another topic that’s been top of mind over the past few years: artificial intelligence.
Given recent electoral events it doesn’t require a huge imaginative leap to envisage a dystopian United States in the “not-so-distant future.” That future is when Amy Berryman’s philosophical, sci-fi–infused play Walden, which premiered on London’s West End and now comes to Second Stage Theater, takes place, depicting a world wrecked by climate catastrophe, human folly, and rapaciousness.
It’s a fallacy that addiction can be cured by a stint in rehab. Anyone celebrating sobriety can affirm that the process of recovery takes decades—and is often lifelong. Nevertheless, a rehab experience can trigger a life-changing awakening. This unpredictable process is at the center of Spike Manton and Harry Teinowtiz’s Another Shot, a poignant exploration of Teinowitz’s alcoholism and treatment. Director Jackson Gay keeps the play teetering between denial and acceptance, and between comedy and tragedy.
Antisemitism, as “the world’s oldest hatred,” appears to defy time limits. It may cloak itself in the cultural norms of a particular society, but similar tropes, accusations, and treatises, sometimes tweaked, resurface in different locations. Remember This Trick, deftly directed by David Herskovits, who also doubles as sound designer, is a collaborative, thoroughly engaging exploration of antisemitism across millennia, and the resilience and survival of those who experience it.
Hope blooms even in the darkest and cruelest of times in Heartland, by Gabriel Jason Dean. The story pairs two unlikely geographical places: Omaha, Nebraska, and Afghanistan. Geetee (Mari Vial-Golden), is an Afghani orphan who was displaced by war and adopted by Harold (Mark Cuddy), an Afghani scholar who teaches at the University of Nebraska. She returns to her homeland as an adult to teach at Blue Sky, a school for girls. There she meets Nazrullah (Naz, for short), a math teacher at the school.
