Drama

,

Scarlett Dreams

,
Scarlett Dreams

In addition to introducing the word robot to the English language, Czech writer Karel Čapek’s 1920 sci-fi drama R.U.R. depicted a dystopian world in which scientifically manufactured laborers gradually eradicate humans. The play perfectly captured the anxieties of the burgeoning Machine Age and was a big hit on Broadway in 1922. S. Asher Gelman’s Scarlett Dreams attempts to tap into similar uneasiness as the former Information Age settles into the current Age of Intelligence. With the meteoric advancement and sudden ubiquity of artificial intelligence (AI), the play suggests that it may be just a matter of time when people will be controlled by digital avatars, and the difference between reality and virtual reality (VR) will become purely conjectural.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Philadelphia, Here I Come!

,
Philadelphia, Here I Come!

Philadelphia, Here I Come, written in the 1960s by Irish playwright Brian Friel, poignantly captures the anticipation, fear, and excitement of emigrating to a new place. Set on the eve of departure, Friel’s play focuses on Gar, the would-be émigré, in both his Public self (played with subdued melancholy by David McElwee) as he struggles with his decision to leave, and his Private self (played with exuberance by A.J. Shively), screaming to get out. It’s deadly boring in Ballybeg, a tiny little corner of County Donegal, Ireland, where the most exciting things are a game of checkers and memories of teenage shenanigans.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Macbeth (An Undoing)

,
Macbeth (An Undoing)

Theatergoers yearning to see a new spin on Macbeth need look no further than Zinnie Harris’s Macbeth (An Undoing). Written and directed by Harris, it is a feminist version of Shakespeare’s original that puts Lady Macbeth at its center. But while Harris succeeds in expanding Lady Macbeth’s presence in the story, ultimately the playwright is defeated in increasing the character’s agency, given Shakespeare’s clear-cut trajectory of the doomed Queen. 

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Las Borinqueñas

,
Las Borinqueñas

Nelson Diaz-Marcano wrote Las Borinqueñas to honor Puerto Rican women, like his mother and grandmothers, who work hard, raise children and serve their communities. But his bilingual play’s awkwardly presented fact-based component—concerning the clinical trials for the first birth control pill, which were conducted in Puerto Rico in the 1950s—seems to get in the way of his affectionate personal portrait.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

The Hummingbirds

,
The Hummingbirds

The fun thing about writing a fantasy set in the future or in some alternate universe is, of course, you get to make up your own rules. Garret Jon Groenveld’s The Hummingbirds, a dystopian fantasy set in a future of indeterminate distance, has been kicking around for a decade or so, but it is currently making its New York debut at the Chain Theatre. Groenveld depicts a highly regulated society, yet a violent and anarchic one, and it’s debatable whether we’ve moved closer to such an environment since he wrote it. But no question, the man has imagination, and his vision is efficiently presented in a well-staged, well-acted little production.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Fish

,
Fish

The broken pieces of public education are laid bare in Fish, a world premiere drama by Kia Corthron presented by the Keen Company. Set in an unnamed high school, the play captures the ails of urban education, the poverty-stricken neighborhoods in which they sit, and the resulting challenges students experience as they try to keep their heads above water.

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

KING

, , ,
KING

In Ireland’s County Cork there are apparently many ghosts. Nasty ghosts. KING (an acronym for Keep Ignoring Nasty Ghosts) posits that ghosts of the past have a central role in the way we live our present—and future. Fishamble, a Dublin-based theater showcase for new Irish plays, has produced this work, which features a solo performance by Pat Kinevane, a veteran associate of the company. Director Jim Cullerton has shaped it into a powerful but enigmatic and often disturbing reflection on obsession, mental illness, England’s domination of Ireland and its empire, and one man’s attempt to grapple with a litany of wrongs, both past and present.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Grief Hotel

,
Grief Hotel

Liza Birkenmeier’s Grief Hotel was part of Clubbed Thumb’s 2023 Summerworks program, and now comes to the Public Theater for a more extended engagement. This is great news, because the play very much deserves a longer look and wider audience. It is presented in partnership with New Georges, who produce “weird, weird-ish, and often impossible plays”; Grief Hotel is weird—gloriously so—but it’s not impossible. In fact, the strength of the play lies in Birkenmeier’s canny creation of an offbeat yet accessible style, thanks to her sharp ear for dialogue that is fundamentally naturalistic and works in productive combination with the play’s slightly surreal, collage-like structure, directed with bracing clarity by Tara Ahmadinejad.

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

Eddie Izzard’s Hamlet

, ,
Eddie Izzard’s Hamlet

Great love and labor has clearly gone into the performance of Eddie Izzard’s 2½-hour solo Hamlet. The adaptation by Mark Izzard (Eddie’s older brother) is generally true to Shakespeare’s text, the split-level set by Tom Piper is wisely uncluttered, and Izzard delivers Shakespeare’s verse with remarkable ease. 

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

Corruption

, ,
Corruption

American playwright J. T. Rogers, the author of Oslo, tackles political issues again in Corruption. At first glance, the play’s subject matter looks parochial: the phone-hacking scandal in London in 2010 and 2011. That scandal, in which newspapers belonging to Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch were found to have hacked private phones as well as those of public officials, engulfed newspapers, prime ministers, investigative reporters, and members of Parliament. In Bartlett Sher’s thrilling production, the immersion into British politics comes with numerous parallels to American politics.

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

Brooklyn Laundry

, ,
Brooklyn Laundry

In the new drama Brooklyn Laundry, John Patrick Shanley—both author and director—is toying with the impact of uncanny coincidences on the narrative trajectory of his principal characters. That theme should ring a bell with fans of Moonstruck, the intoxicating 1987 film comedy for which this echt New York playwright won a best original screenplay Oscar.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

The Slow Dance

,
The Slow Dance

Fans of David Letterman may recall when he used to send a costumed staffer out to New York streets for stunts like “Can a Guy in a Bear Suit Hail a Cab?” and “Can a Guy in a Bear Suit Get into a Strip Club?” As in those sketches, someone wearing a bear costume makes incongruous appearances during The Slow Dance by Lisi DeHaas—except this time the question is “Can a person in a bear suit liven up an emotionally and narratively deficient drama?”

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

The Effect

,
The Effect

Lucy Prebble’s The Effect was first staged in 2012, presented at Barrow Street Theatre in the Village in 2016, and then revived at London’s National Theatre in 2023. That revival now comes to the Shed. It is a psychopharmacological love story: Tristan (Paapa Essiedu) and Connie (Taylor Russell) are participants in a clinical trial for a new antidepressant, overseen by Dr. Lorna James (Michele Austin). Tristan is an extroverted working-class Londoner from Hackney with a mix of confidence and self-deprecation, while Connie is a more tightly wound, introverted psychology student whose participation in the study is apparently less about getting paid than about intellectual interest.

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

Tuesdays with Morrie

, ,
Tuesdays with Morrie

Len Cariou—Stephen Sondheim’s original Sweeney Todd—plays the title role in Sea Dog Theater’s revival of Tuesdays with Morrie by Jeffrey Hatcher and Mitch Albom. Amid the stark, solemn beauty of Charles Otto Blesch and Leopold Eidlitz’s Romanesque-revival chapel at St. George’s Episcopal Church on Stuyvesant Square, director Erwin Maas has built a fleet, music-filled production around the distinguished Canadian actor, who’s sharp and feisty at 84. In the role of a professor experiencing the galloping effects of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease), Cariou steers clear of mawkishness with a performance that’s wry and witty from beginning to end.

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

Maiden Voyage

, ,
Maiden Voyage

In spite of the progress that women have made over the years when it comes to achieving gender equality, Cayenne Douglass’s new play, Maiden Voyage, shows that women need to stop overcompensating and simply act authentically in their workplace. Directed by Alex Keegan, and coinciding with Women’s History Month, this drama takes one five fathoms deep into the ocean and a distaff Navy world.

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

Remember This Trick

, , , ,
Remember This Trick

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.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

The Seven Year Disappear

,
The Seven Year Disappear

Part coming-of-age story, part domestic drama, and part mystery tale, Jordan Seavey’s The Seven Year Disappear is a deeply unsettling work that ponders the thorny question: How far should an artist go to mine his or her life for art? Directed by Scott Elliott, Seavey’s play reveals the darker side of the art world, when a renowned artist disappears for seven years and her son goes into free fall.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

The Ally

,
The Ally

The Ally is eminently watchable, although it seems like it shouldn’t be. Unless, that is, you go to the theater to be lectured on geopolitical issues. Itamar Moses’ new drama runs more than 2½ hours, and you might feel like you spend about two hours of it watching one character, who’s speaking to another person on stage, deliver a speech that elucidates a stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, complete with historical references, geographical context, statistics and preemptive rebuttals.

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post
,

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

,
Pericles, Prince of Tyre

Pericles, the first of Shakespeare’s late romances, is the only play not in the First Folio. Most critics agree that the first two acts are by someone else, possibly the work of George Wilkins, who wrote the “prose narrative” on which the play is based, and from which Fiasco Theater’s galloping production sometimes borrows. But the last three acts are the Bard, and this play, even though Ben Jonson called it “a mouldy tale,” has proven resilient.

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

Deadly Stages

, ,
Deadly Stages

Deadly Stages, a new murder mystery–melodrama by Marc Castle and Mark Finley, is a strange pastiche. It follows backstage shenanigans that involve a temperamental grande dame of the theater, a younger, theatrically untrained movie star, and assorted hangers-on: the reliable supporting actor, the producer, the director, and possibly a scheming upstart. Anyone who hasn’t seen All About Eve should begin to prepare now. 

Click for print friendly PDF version of this blog post