Stanford Friedman

,

Lowcountry

,
Lowcountry

Abby Rosebrock’s 2018 dark comedy, Dido of Idaho, featured an act of extreme violence carried out with a household object. Her 2019 follow-up, Blue Ridge, focused on addicts trying to form relationships in the midst of a recovery program. Her new work, a twisted tale of good will and bad romance called Lowcountry, utilizes both of these dramatic elements in its exploration of a first date warped by bouts of desperation and deception. In this Atlantic Theater Company production directed by Jo Bonney, some scenes might be over-extended, but the sexual tension simmers, then boils over.

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

Bear Grease

, ,
Bear Grease

LightningCloud, a portmanteau of the wife-and-husband writing team Crystle Lightning and Henry Cloud Andrade, have rumbled into town with their touring production of Bear Grease. Inspired by a certain 1972 stage hit, and even more so by the subsequent film version starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, this Indigenous take on an old favorite asks the musical question: What if the hot boys and cool girls of high school also happen to be Enoch Cree and Huichol? However, as directed by Lightning, the more relevant query for this rambling vehicle is: What happens when a piece that began life as a one-hour parody is stretched into a two-hour variety show?

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

The Imaginary Invalid

,
The Imaginary Invalid

The Imaginary Invalid is of interest to historians not just because it is Molière’s last play and not just because Molière himself performed the lead role of Monsieur Argan. It is also due to the fact that, while Argan is a hypochondriac, Molière suffered from dire, real-life ailments that caused him to collapse on stage during just his fourth performance. He died soon afterward. Such dark irony does not haunt his lighthearted comedy, though, and so it has floated, for more than 350 years, from one fizzy reinterpretation to the next. The latest, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and produced by Red Bull Theater, is a loosey-goosey affair. The vibe is French farce à la The Marx Brothers. The company is a puff pastry stuffed with ham. And the story is King Lear, but with enema jokes.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse

,
The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse

The New Group, celebrating its 30th anniversary this spring, may not be so new anymore, but that doesn’t mean they have forgotten how to rock. Indeed, their latest production, a pop musical called The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse, is nothing if not a Gen Z shout-out to teenage angst. With his music and lyrics, Michael Breslin delivers a handful of clever, hard-driving songs into the hands of a capable company of young performers. Unfortunately, Breslin’s book, co-written with Patrick Foley, has all the charm of an undisciplined child.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Five Models in Ruins, 1981

,
Five Models in Ruins, 1981

The October 1981 issue of Vogue magazine features Nastassia Kinski on the cover and includes the infamous Richard Avedon two-page photo spread of the actress wearing nothing but a huge, writhing boa constrictor. But in the alternate reality of Caitlin Saylor Stephens’s vitriolic new comedy, Five Models in Ruins, 1981, that October issue very nearly comes to feature a much lesser-known cover girl, and the accompanying story would showcase not a serpent, but five decidedly catty women in flowing white gowns.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Ceremonies in Dark Old Men

,
Ceremonies in Dark Old Men

In 1969 the two-year-old Negro Ensemble Company mounted the off-Broadway premiere of Lonne Elder III’s Ceremonies in Dark Old Men. “A remarkable play,” raved Clive Barnes in the New York Times. Now, in a joint presentation with the Peccadillo Theater Company and producer Eric Falkenstein, the NEC revisits this gut-punch period piece, offering a rock-solid production that hums along toward inevitable tragedy, chronicling the socioeconomic plight of Harlem in the 1950s through the deeds and decisions of one troubled family.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Kowalski

,
Kowalski

It was the summer of 1947, and Tennessee Williams needed a man—a leading man, that is, for his newest work, a feral little melodrama called A Streetcar Named Desire. Veteran film star John Garfield was the top contender for the part, but as posited in Kowalski, Gregg Ostrin’s seductive, and occasionally true new play, a 23-year-old Marlon Brando won the role of Stanley over the course of a single, drink-filled evening at Williams’s bungalow in Provincetown, Mass.

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

Radio Downtown: Radical ’70s Artists Live on Air

, ,
Radio Downtown: Radical ’70s Artists Live on Air

Creative teams that turn popular movies into musicals are becoming commonplace on Broadway, but as Radio Downtown: Radical '70s Artists Live on Air demonstrates, it takes a rare breed of creator to unearth a collection of decades-old public radio interviews and transform them into a viable piece of Off-Broadway theater. Fortunately, Steve Cosson is just such a visionary.

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

Babe

, ,
Babe

The Oxford English Dictionary lists eight different meanings of the word babe, and that’s not even counting the famous talking pig. Playwright Jessica Goldberg is specifically interested in two of them. In Babe, her 2022 short and sour drama, currently receiving a well-appointed staging by the New Group, Goldberg offers an example of how the term can simultaneously signal affection and condescension. Pitting a powerful, wrong-headed man against two smart women of different generations, the trio admire one another for their singular skills while ruing the destructive power plays that undo their workplace relationship.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Tin Church

,
Tin Church

Song and story teach us that what a child experiences on a trip to grandmother’s house can go one of two ways. There might be pumpkin pie after a voyage over the river and through the woods. Or, as with the central character in Robyne Parrish’s grim and haunting Tin Church, a nightmare awaits, big and bad as any wolf and capable of swallowing a body whole.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Bringer of Doom

,
Bringer of Doom

To “kill,” in the parlance of stand-up comedy, is to fully win over an audience. And while a burly comic is one of the central characters staggering his way through Joe Thirstino’s toxic satire Bringer of Doom, the specter of killing, in the traditional sense of the term, is the larger presence on stage. There are no guns going off, but there are plenty of triggers. Attempted murder, attempted suicide, alcoholism and depression are the stars of this production, with cameo appearances by vengeance and indifference, not to mention an offstage death caused by a wayward sea mammal.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Simpatico

,
Simpatico

Simpatico is one of Sam Shepard’s later works. Although he wrote for the stage until the year of his death—his final play, A Particle of Dread, was produced in 2017—when Simpatico premiered in 1994 Shepard had already forged three decades’ worth of cryptic messages and weird interludes. So perhaps the playwright is enjoying a well-earned laugh at his own expense when, early in the first scene, one of the play’s two protagonists turns to the other and asks, “Do you wanna talk or do you wanna be cryptic and weird?” 

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

The Actors

,
The Actors

Boundaries of all types are tested in Ronnie Larsen’s comedic and big-hearted family chronicle, The Actors. The line between Democrat and Republican is pulled taut, as is the division between atheist and religious believer. But those are relatively minor concerns for the playwright. More to the point are the boundaries of grief and how to break through them, the borders of what constitutes a family, and what limits stage actors might burst through when their roles take over their lives. As farcical as it is melancholy, there are as many surprise door knocks in the play’s two acts and two hours as there are woeful revelations. 

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

A Sign of the Times

, ,
A Sign of the Times

A Sign of the Times, a new jukebox romp featuring musical riffs and cultural rifts from the 1960s, is full of statements. It has something to say about civil rights, women’s liberation, Vietnam, the course of true love and the influence of Pop Art. But this York Theatre Company production also leaves behind some nagging questions. Can a musical be “woke” when its book is tired? Can stock characters find believable ways to bond? Was Petula Clark right that things will be great when you’re downtown?

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

The Greatest Hits Down Route 66

,
The Greatest Hits Down Route 66

Histories come in all shapes and sizes and can be chronicled in any number of fashions. Family histories, each unhappy in their own way, may reveal personal pains that turn out to be strikingly universal. A country’s history can be told in terms of its politics, its geographic landmarks, its immigrants. And a people’s history can be reflected in its folk music. Any one of these might make for an engrossing night of theater. But when attempting to combine all three, finding the right balance and weaving a cohesive tale become a tall order. Such is the case with the New Light Theater Project’s production of The Greatest Hits Down Route 66, which finds itself short on songs, long on family dysfunction, and scattered on Americana.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Madwomen of the West

,
Madwomen of the West

To paraphrase Chekhov, if a piñata is dangling from the ceiling as a show begins, should it not be swatted down in time for the final curtain? Well, in the case of Sandra Tsing Loh’s Madwomen of the West, the piñata is left intact, but the façades of its four characters are broken open to reveal some big secrets. Unfortunately, by the time these confidences are divulged, their importance has been overshadowed by the production’s self-referential gimmickry. It is the handicraft of Brecht, not Chekhov, that is at work here as the audience is constantly taken out of the world of the play with the performers speaking directly to them, or reciting stage directions aloud, or dropping character altogether.

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

The Jerusalem Syndrome

, ,
The Jerusalem Syndrome

It is not unusual for musical comedy characters to undergo transformations. The genre is filled with lonely women who find love, vindictive men who turn generous, and insecure bumblers who gain confidence. All of the above are on display in the York Theatre Company’s breezy premiere of The Jerusalem Syndrome, but the writing team of Laurence Holzman and Felicia Needleman serve up this evolution with a new twist. Well, an ancient twist, actually. By play’s end, its five leads are all better people. But they achieve this feat by spending most of the show thoroughly convinced that they are characters from the Bible. 

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Scene Partners

,
Scene Partners

The line between finding fame and losing one’s mind is disturbingly blurred in the Vineyard Theatre production of Scene Partners, the latest quirky work from mind-bending playwright John J. Caswell Jr. Operating on as many as four different levels of consciousness, this messy, stratified tale is held together, barely, by director Rachel Chavkin, who utilizes the strongest of glues: a sure-handed and deeply felt performance from her lead actor, Dianne Wiest.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Stereophonic

,
Stereophonic

A huge audio console occupies center stage in the Playwrights Horizons’ unhurried and precisely observed world premiere of Stereophonic. This makes sense not only because all of the action is set within the close confines of a music studio, but also because it is an apt metaphor for what playwright David Adjmi and songwriter Will Butler have in mind. Their musical drama chronicles a year in the life of a rock band and its tech team as they go about recording a new album. Decibel levels rise and fall as tensions mount, then subside, while the chance for harmony among the bandmates is continually thwarted by their insecurities, jealousies and self-indulgences. It’s a volatile mix.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors

,
Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors

The stakes are high, and quite pointy, in Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors. In this jocular take on that jugular-loving creature of the night, blood is sucked, true love is tested and vanity finds a way to survive in the soul of a monster who ironically cannot cast his own reflection in a mirror. Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic tale provides the groundwork, but the spirit of Mel Brooks and Monty Python, and the ghost of Charles Ludlam, lift the evening to its batty heights.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post