Mad scientists and power-hungry robots have for generations warned about the perils of new technology and the consequences of messing with Mother Nature. The Glitch follows suit, though in a decidedly romanticized and optimistic fashion. Playwright Kipp Koenig, a former tech worker, has created not a Dr. Frankenstein but a nerdy scientist dealing with a little emotional baggage. And his invention is not a homicidal HAL à la 2001: A Space Odyssey but a cynical Siri who toys with her mortal underlings, though for the greater good.
Ali Keller’s (un)conditional, directed by Ivey Lowe, takes an unflinching look at two heterosexual marriages tested by sexual desires, shifting boundaries, and the uneasy bargains couples make in the name of love. With sharp writing and intimate staging, the play probes what one is willing to give—or give up—in relationships meant to last a lifetime.
Anonymously penned scripts are rare—and rarer still when the identity of one of its two characters is obscured. In Murdoch: The Final Interview, a multimedia drama/farce directed by Christopher Scott, that actor portrays both an enigmatic interviewer and media magnate Rupert Murdoch.
“You don’t need to be better. I like how you are.” In a story about a trans child, this line is something one might hear from the parents of that child, as they learn to adjust and accept. But in Caroline, trans playwright Preston Max Allen defies expectations for a story about a trans child. It is the trans child in Caroline who speaks this line to her mother, an eight-years-sober alcoholic talking about her recovery.
Jonathan Spector’s This Much I Know is an erudite, ambitious, and wide-ranging play in the vein of Tom Stoppard. Three actors play dozens of parts, spanning nationalities and time periods; historical events and personages alternate with the everyday problems of people trying to navigate 21st-century life; and questions of cognition, epistemology, and politics are interrogated.
In a spirited revival of John Patrick Shanley’s Italian American Reconciliation, director Austin Pendleton brings fresh verve to the tale of Huey, a lovelorn dreamer who enlists his best friend Aldo to help win back his fiery ex-wife, Janice. The production captures the play’s blend of romantic folly and heartfelt yearning that first endeared it to audiences decades ago.
Leaving no explorer-themed cliché unturned, Ernest Shackleton Loves Me boldly goes where many, many musicals have gone before, weaving a story of ersatz empowerment out of artistic crisis. The show, which encumbers a pair of insanely talented performers with thankless roles at the center of a human cartoon, patronizes and demeans its audience in its eagerness to be idiosyncratic.
