Drama

Dracula

Dracula

In Kate Hamill’s adaption of Bram Stoker’s Dracula at Classic Stage Company, fighting against vampires becomes synonymous with fighting the patriarchy. With Sarna Lapine directing (she also directed Hamill’s Little Women) and a stellar cast, Hamill’s Dracula manages to be hilarious without descending into farce, perhaps because so much of the humor is in the service of a feminist reshaping of Stoker’s novel, which turns the struggle against vampires into a struggle for self-individuation and self-determination.

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The Commons

The Commons

Lily Akerman’s The Commons should come with a trigger warning for anyone who has ever had multiple roommates in a New York City apartment. She depicts four roommates (three millennials and one Gen Xer) as they navigate the harrowing questions and minutiae of shared space—the buildup of burnt tomato sauce on a stove top, the viability of leftover jars of food, the ethics of decluttering, the disappearance of chocolate almonds, the gendering of certain chores, and, God forbid, the presence of a mouse—with various shades of aggression and passive-aggression.

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Chasing the River

Chasing the River

Jean Dobie Giebel’s Chasing the River follows the post-incarceration difficulties of Kat (Christina Elise Perry), who returns to her childhood home to seek closure on a disrupted life. Playwright Giebel delays explaining, until the play’s conclusion, the reason Kat went to prison, and that choice is a double-edged sword. Although it creates suspense as to what really took place in her family home, keeping Kat’s crime and the backstory shrouded in mystery poses a problem for the actor who must sustain the anguish of a past life and bring it to a crescendo at the end.

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A Peregrine Falls

A Peregrine Falls

Leegrid Stevens’s A Peregrine Falls, now at the Wild Project under the direction of Padraic Lillis, tells the story of a Mormon family in Austin, Texas, in 2010 and 2012, as they grapple with the aftermath of horrific family abuse. The play combines realism, in scenes taking place in hospital and state-court waiting areas and a family-owned car dealership (scenic design by Zoë Hurwitz), with flights of dream imagery and symbolism, the latter mostly conveyed by a narrator who is both within and without the story (the peregrine of the title stands for the ultimate predator, a bird who preys on other birds).

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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.

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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.

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Medea

Medea

The script for Simon Stone’s Medea at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) carries the notation “after Euripides.” Anyone who attends and expects tunics and armbands will therefore be disappointed: Stone has modernized the story of the spurned wife of Jason, the Argonaut who turned to the daughter of Creon for physical comfort. His version changes the names of the characters: Medea is Anna; Jason is Lucas; Creon is Christopher; and Creon’s daughter, who doesn’t appear in Euripides, is named Clara and is very much present.

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Brecht: Call and Respond

Brecht: Call and Respond

An evening of one-act plays, such as those in Brecht: Call and Respond, presents considerable challenges. Playwrights and actors must develop and sustain their characterizations quickly and intensely over a shorter period of time. The umbrella title for three works, Brecht: Call and Respond includes The Jewish Wife by Bertolt Brecht, Sunset Point by Arlene Hutton, and Self Help in the Anthropocene by Kristin Idaszak (the last two were commissioned by New Light Theater Company in 2019).

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Sister Calling My Name

Sister Calling My Name

Buzz McLaughlin’s 1996 play, Sister Calling My Name, tells a familial story of loss, love and forgiveness. At the center is Michael (John Marshall) an English literature professor whose life has not gone according to his expectations. He has recently undergone a divorce and been denied tenure, and the last thing he wants to do is visit his mentally disabled sister Lindsey (Gillian Todd), who made his life extremely difficult growing up.

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Doctors Jane and Alexander

Doctors Jane and Alexander

Doctors Jane and Alexander wrestles with the idea of what it means to live in the shadow of a famous parent. Written, directed and produced by Edward Einhorn, the play focuses on the life of his mother, Jane Einhorn. She was the daughter of Alexander S. Wiener, a scientist who became famous (with Karl Landsteiner) for the discovery of the Rh factor in blood, critical knowledge for the success of transfusions

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Paris

Paris

Arriving during this primary season like a theatrical rejoinder to all the Democratic hand-wringing over the working class, Paris is an honest portrayal of people who need every dollar they earn. Or it’s a sly commentary on how race figures into a seemingly nonracist environment (i.e., one full of “nice” white people). Or it’s just a well-performed and engaging workplace dramedy. However it’s viewed, this sharply written, superbly acted new play provides theatergoers with a jolt from winter doldrums.

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Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost

The Fellowship for Performing Arts concentrates its efforts on drama with a Christian theme. Previously it has presented an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters; Shadowlands, a 1990 drama about Lewis himself and his middle-aged romance with an American Jewish woman; and Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons (1960), about Sir Thomas More. But its current production of Paradise Lost is a heartening leap forward for the company.

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Romeo and Bernadette

Romeo and Bernadette

It’s rare that a musical synthesizes genres and influences from popular and high culture and succeeds at integrating them all, but Romeo and Bernadette does. With book and lyrics by Mark Saltzman, and music adapted from traditional Italian melodies, this show incorporates elements of Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, with a bit of The Sopranos to boot. Northern vs. southern Italian (Sicilian) class prejudices and contemporary renditions of classical Italian operas are thrown into the mix for good measure.

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17 Minutes

17 Minutes

In the aftermath of the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., there came the revelation that Scot Peterson, a sheriff’s deputy stationed outside the school at the time of the attack, failed to engage the shooter, staying hidden at the base of a stairwell for some 48 minutes. Though Peterson is never mentioned, he is clearly the inspiration for Scott Organ’s poignant and piercing tick-tock drama, 17 Minutes. Tracking the steady demise of a good man who makes a bad mistake, the work chronicles a life that not so much shatters as it does dismantle, like a service revolver being disassembled one piece at a time.

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Timon of Athens

Timon of Athens

There are numerous challenges in staging Timon of Athens, one of Shakespeare’s least produced works (perhaps not even performed during his own lifetime). It’s an invective-filled and disjointed morality tale, a story of a profligate spender let down by false friends who turns to excessive isolation and bitterness. Probably coauthored with Thomas Middleton, Timon is usually described as deficient in some way or as so odd as to defy categorization: words such as “baffling,” “curious,” “unfinished,” “abandoned,” and “mistake” populate major works of criticism. Even its place in the First Folio is dubious, as textual oddities arguably demonstrate it was not originally intended to be included among Shakespeare’s collected works.

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Maz and Bricks

Maz and Bricks

Maz and Bricks, a production of the estimable Irish company Fishamble, draws on many of the hallmark of Irish drama in the last quarter century. Playwright Eva O’Connor tells her story, a two-hander, with vibrant narrative monologues alternating with scenes and even a double direct address from its characters to the audience. The monologue intertwining has been a staple of Irish playwriting from Brian Friel (Faith Healer, 1979) to Conor McPherson (Port Authority, 2001). The scabrous language, elevated to poetry, is equally Irish.

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Or, An Astronaut Play

Or, An Astronaut Play

The welcoming speech at a Tank production usually stresses the reach of the organization. The audience is typically informed that the Tank produced more than 1,000 productions last year. It’s impossible that all of them would be home runs, of course, and yet even those with modest virtues may be worth noting. Such is the case with Johnny G. Lloyd’s Or, An Astronaut Play, an amusing sketch of a play enhanced by very good performances, as well as the author’s intelligence and sly wit.

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One in Two

One in Two

Donja R. Love’s new play, One in Two, captures the truth, humor, pain, love and realism of being a full-fledged human: specifically a black, gay or bisexual man living with HIV. It’s a beautiful, albeit graphic, story of Donté, a community, a life—many lives.

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The Thin Place

The Thin Place

Lucas Hnath, recently represented on Broadway by the spun-from-fact Hillary and Clinton, and soon to be represented at the Vineyard by Dana H., a story drawn from family experience, is cleansing his theatrical palate between them with The Thin Place, a story of the afterlife that conjures up the eerie worlds of Conor McPherson and M.R. James. The dedication to Ricky Jay, the late magician, indicates Hnath is out to perform his own sleight of hand with a deeply unsettling ghost story. 

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Harry Townsend’s Last Stand

Harry Townsend’s Last Stand

Toward the end of Harry Townsend’s Last Stand, a play that’s set in a New England lake house and revolves around the strained relationship between an aging father and his adult child, a door is opened and the call of a loon is heard. It immediately brings to mind On Golden Pond (“The loons, Norman!”), a play that’s set in a New England lake house and revolves around the strained relationship between an aging father and his adult child. This association doesn’t do Harry Townsend any favors, though, since its parent-child relationship is not as well developed as the one in On Golden Pond and, consequently, the conflict and emotions feel forced.

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