Joe White’s Blackout Songs, nominated for an Olivier Award in 2023 and now playing Off-Broadway, depicts the convulsive romance of Alice and Charlie, who meet at the coffee urn of an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting and rush headlong into the squalid territory of pop-modernist classics such as The Lost Weekend and Days of Wine and Roses. Drunken-wastrel love is an old story, but White—with skilled assistance from director Rory McGregor and a team of very good theatrical designers—gives this short, insightful drama a 21st-century sheen.
Well, I’ll Let You Go
Well, I’ll Let You Go is written by actor Bubba Weiler, who’s a little over 30, and directed by Jack Serio, still under 30 and seemingly ubiquitous in New York theater. It’s set in a mid-size, midwestern town that has lost its skill-based, manufacturing economy. Weiler’s characters are adjusting, in sundry ways, to coarsening influences, including the regional fulfillment facility of a gargantuan online retailer, which is the town’s sole surefire source of regular employment. Weiler and Serio bring a balance of intellect and feeling to their work, and the result is a fresh, engrossing chronicle of ordinary citizens contending with change for the worse.
On Set with Theda Bara
On Set with Theda Bara is a single-actor comedy-drama by Joey Merlo that revolves around the suspicious disappearance of a genderqueer teenager. In this pastiche of film noir, Merlo piles mystery upon outlandish mystery, and David Greenspan leads the spectators (limited to 50 a performance) through a 65-minute, mazelike tale that’s at once intriguing and mystifying.



