November 21, 2024

Drama, Musical, Reviews

Stanford Friedman

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.

November 18, 2024

Comedy, Experimental Theater, Reviews, Immersive/Interactive

Nicole Colbert

Burnout Paradise

Pony Cam’s Burnout Paradise is a madcap smorgasbord of actions that are tied together by a final aim: complete a number of tasks in a certain amount of time, all while walking on a treadmill. Part performance art, part physical theater, the show opens with four performers—Claire Bird, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub and Hugo Williams—on treadmills under a large screen displaying the words “Warm Up.” A soft, muttering soundscape (created by the ensemble) floats through the air, offering thoughts on greatness—“If greatness doesn’t come knocking on your door, you should go knocking on its door.”

November 14, 2024

Musical, Reviews

Marc Miller

Mama I’m a Big Girl Now!

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.

November 12, 2024

Comedy, Reviews

Marc Miller

The Z Team

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.

November 10, 2024

Drama, Reviews

Adrienne Onofri

Loneliness Was a Pandemic

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.

gala

Edward Karam

April 13, 2017

TACT plans May 8 gala

Edward Karam

April 13, 2017

The Actor’s Company Theatre (TACT) will present its spring gala on May 8 at the University Club of New York (1 W. 54th St.). The fundraiser will honor four women: Alice Ripley, Theresa Rebeck, Elizabeth McCann and Nelle Nugent. The event will begin with a cocktail reception at 6:30 p.m., followed by dinner, a live auction, and entertainment by singer Liz Callaway. TACT is a company of theater artists that reveals, reclaims, and reimagines great plays of literary merit, To purchase tickets for the 2017 Spring Gala, call (212) 645-8228 or email info@tactnyc.org.

TACT plans May 8 gala

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