October 7: A Verbatim Play by Phelim McAleers depicts events in the Gaza Envelope of southwest Israel on the day of last year’s attack by the Islamist organization Hamas. It’s based on interviews conducted by McAleers and his wife, journalist-filmmaker Ann McElhinnie, immediately after the siege that reportedly killed 1,200 people, wounded an estimated 5,400, and resulted in seizure by Hamas of more than 250 hostages. In a May 7 speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance ceremony, President Joe Biden lamented that, eight months after the assault (and despite ongoing warfare in Israel and Gaza), “people are already forgetting” the brutality of that day. McAleer’s play is agitprop against forgetfulness, burning a sense of the day’s agony into playgoers’ imaginations.
It’s I’m Not Rappaport meets Waiting for Godot meets The Gin Game! Take two old codgers on a park bench, combine with existential meanderings in a fixed setting, season with the ravages of aging, and you have Just Another Day, Dan Lauria’s uncertain reflection on all three components (but especially the third). Just Another Day suffers from being too much—well, just another day. Nothing terribly dramatic happens, and a great deal of curiously multisyllabic palaver fills out the hour and 45 minutes, including intermission. But it does have two actors very much worth seeing, for Lauria has cast himself, and opposite him, a flawless Patty McCormack.
Summer means free theater in New York, and Molière in the Park, an organization co-founded by Lucie Tiberghien and Garth Belcon. The Miser becomes the third free production at LeFrak Center, following The Misanthrope (2022) and Tartuffe (2023). Directed by Tiberghien, it’s an invigorating new version of the French playwright’s 1668 satire.
Boundaries of all types are tested in Ronnie Larsen’s comedic and big-hearted family chronicle, The Actors. The line between Democrat and Republican is pulled taut, as is the division between atheist and religious believer. But those are relatively minor concerns for the playwright. More to the point are the boundaries of grief and how to break through them, the borders of what constitutes a family, and what limits stage actors might burst through when their roles take over their lives. As farcical as it is melancholy, there are as many surprise door knocks in the play’s two acts and two hours as there are woeful revelations.
Near the end of the Barry Manilow musical Harmony, the surviving Comedian Harmonist Ari Leschnikoff, “a Bulgarian singing waiter” who survived the Holocaust to return to his home country, brags to a rabbi: “We saved them, Rabbi! Every Jewish person in Bulgaria! We wouldn’t let them have them! Not one!” This startling declaration, which demanded elaboration, is the foundation of The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria. The story of Boris III might have remained a historical footnote but for Sasha Wilson, the cowriter of the piece (with Joseph Cullen), whose grandparents escaped Bulgaria during World War II. It turns out that the history of Bulgaria in the 20th century is far more complicated than the Harmony passage suggests.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury's semi-autobiographical Public Obscenities returns to the stage this season at Theatre for a New Audience as part of The Under the Radar Festival. The production explores themes of returning home and complex relationships as a queer Indian man tries to come to terms with his family’s secrets while breaking away from learned behavior.
Heist! is a funny, upbeat new showcase for highly talented musical theater artists. Directed by James Will McBride, the show concerns three bank robbers —Gil (Cordara Newson), Jack (Alec Irion) and Chris (James Cella)—and a job gone bad. Their robbery fails, and only Gil and Jack escape. Jack spirals downward at the news that Chris was killed by the police.
Words are constantly shifting and changing meaning, and common phrases take on new personas in the world of Lauren Yee’s In a Word. Yee’s play tells the story of Fiona (Laura Ramadei), whose 7-year-old, emotionally disturbed son, Tristan, has been missing for two years. She has no information on his whereabouts, and she sorts through her memories endlessly to find any clue she can about why he disappeared. As Fiona flashes back to past experiences, Yee asks the audience to let go and come along for the ride.
With a whole host of traditional plays and musicals available to choose from, it is sometimes refreshing when theater artists in New York City experiment with form. Creator and producer Brett Epstein’s Rule of 7x7 is just that: an experiment in playwriting wherein seven playwrights each declare a “rule” that must be incorporated into each play. These rules range from a word, a line, or a specific stage direction. To intensify the process, the artists involved have just one month to mount these short plays from conception to performance.
How tightly does the average American cling to a confabulation of love? If pop culture’s steady stream of uninspired TV shows and mildly erotic paperbacks is any indication, people seem to be grasping for any and all channels that lead to answering this question. Unsurprisingly, New York theater offers an intelligent, mesmerizing counter: The Effect, a play by Lucy Prebble. The Effect has a singularly moving tension at its core: can two people fall in love under “the effect” of a powerful anti-depressant? Or is love simply the side effect of that drug?
Barrow Street Theatre’s exceptional take on this award-winning play (it received rave reviews and multiple awards in London and has struck similar chords of awe Off-Broadway), pushes us to seriously consider a fanciful four-letter word that ordinarily inks the pens of poets. Director David Cromer orchestrates this production with white-knuckled excitement at the mere prospect of discovering something unknown about love. The Effect suggests a new, intoxicating interpretation of modern romance, unbothered by moral clichés or excessive sentiment.
The play opens inside a sanitized hospital room, with quiet colors and sensible chairs and white lab coats. Connie Hall (played by a fantastic Susannah Flood) is being interviewed by Dr. James, her clinical supervisor. She is careful and precise, answering every question with painstaking clarity—sometimes to humorous effect. Next, Tristan Frey (a terrific Carter Hudson) plops himself down in from of Dr. James and proceeds to flirt, extemporize and generally misbehave. These two main characters could not be more different from each other. In the confines of their six-week-long aphrodisiac existence as part of the drug trial of an antidepressant, Connie and Tristan discover each other in themselves, each pushing the other to believe in their respective ideas of love.
Cromer urges nervous humor in Flood and Hudson’s performances. The two protagonists carry conversations like precocious babes endowed early with the power of speech. Flood’s Connie is a study in fastidious, think-first-talk-later practicality, but Hudson’s inspired Tristan Frey is endlessly energetic, dancer-like and hell-bent on talking Connie into falling for him. It isn’t enough to say that their chemistry is palpable; when their eyes meet, each magnetizes the other’s performance, elevating the entire production to goosepimply electricity.
As for the emotional trauma of falling in love—for it is, the play argues, a kind of trauma—Cromer reserves such hefty work for Steve Key and Kati Brazda. Understated, Brazda plays the most unexpectedly affecting character, Dr. Lorna James. As the lead psychologist of the antidepressant study, James begins her arc as a dry clinical supervisor, reining in the sexual urges of Connie and Tristan with the amused authority of an animal handler. But as her interactions with Dr. Toby Sealey (Key) reveal, she hides a deep, corrosive wound, thanks in large part to her beliefs in love and attachment. It is through James that we see the real pitfalls of love—the ones Prebble wants to warn us about.
The players are not Cromer’s only tools, however; moving walls, suggestively dark corners and flashing text are sleek supplements to the overall effect of the play (the scenic design is by Marsha Ginsberg and lighting design is by Tyler Micoleau). These additives do not distract from the entire play, as one might expect, but rather enhance Prebble’s narrative. A particularly hilarious scene involves both Connie and Tristan taking a psychological test in which they must name the colors of the words that flash on a screen before them. James dryly notes that her subjects will falter at words that they associate with emotional burden. “Father,” “diet,” “breasts” and “guilty” prove particularly difficult for our lovers.
Cromer aims to show us a precise examination of falling in love, with all its awkward pauses, fitful first moves and, yes, even sex, in all its clinical vulnerability. Prebble’s commentary on modern love is a moving, masterly ode to humanity’s endless pursuit of answers to nebulous ideas. The Effect disturbs and excites—your notions of everything from intimacy to depression will take a hit, for the better.
Barrow Street Theatre’s production of The Effect runs through Sept. 4. Evening performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m.; matinees are Saturday and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets may be purchased by visiting SmartTix.com, on the phone at 212-868-4444, or in person at the Barrow Street Theatre box office, open at 1 p.m. daily. For more information, visit www.BarrowStreetTheatre.com
Who says you can’t find love on a train? Trains are very romantic. Anything can happen on a train. And it does to the two star-crossed maybe/maybe-not lovers in Jerry Mayer’s new comedy, 2 Across at St. Luke's Theatre. Evelyn Rudie (Eloise, among many others), directs a cast that stars award-winning performers, Andrea McArdle and Kip Gilman. Streamlined direction and crisp performances keep this tête-a-tête comedy rolling down the tracks on an early morning commute for an entertaining look at love and the lonely.
Two commuters on a San Francisco BART train meet and duke it out over The New York Times crossword puzzle. And the battle of the sexes is on. Janet, played by Andrea McArdle (polished actress of Annie fame), is a psychiatrist who has just said goodbye to her son who joined the Marines against her wishes. Josh, played by actor extraordinaire Kip Gilman, is an out-of-work advertising man. She is a control freak; he is a freewheeler. They clash.You can always tell a person by the way they do a crossword. And they learn much about each other and themselves as they roll down the tracks competing with their puzzles. Josh inadvertently helps her with her son and she helps him regain his confidence to find a job. As they build up and let down their barriers of emotional baggage, we can relate to the inner yearnings of these two lonely people. After “Granite” Janet’s strategy of helping Josh finish the crossword and tearing down her defenses, they find they are just two vulnerable people with the thought of the romantic possibilities.
Full of quick banter reminiscent of the great classic sitcoms such as "Mash" from which Mayer is renowned, 2 Across is stylish and witty. Gilman is a mix of Al Pacino and Alan Alda; a bit quirky, yet macho, and very charming. Used to enticing women with his wits, Josh is surprised to learn that he has a certain physical appeal as well. McArdle is gorgeous as a neurotic Mary Tyler Moore type. The perfect romantic touch is when Josh recites classic love poems to woo her. All it takes to let her defenses down is poetry, a sandwich and a couple of mini bottles. This is true of any woman, right? Josh finally lowers her stoic resistance and by the time it is their stop, she has conceded she will meet him… or not.
Rudie’s lively direction kept the candid dialogue going. The train setting, designed by Scott Heineman, was so detailed; the intercom voice, the sounds and seats were all so specific. But when the actors stood up, there was no acknowledgement of a moving train. They could have made subtle moves to indicate the jumps and jolts of the train to create the feeling that they were in fact travelling. As nimble as these performers were, there could have been choreographed in-sync movements once or twice that would have really enhanced the overall effect. This is only a minor detail in an otherwise seamless performance by an ensemble of consummate professionals.
At curtain call, they sang a lovely duet that was probably the best part of the show. The play definitely lends itself to music. It would have enhanced the evening to hear more of McArdle’s exquisite singing. She is absolutely gorgeous, but the writing somewhat stifled her, often giving Gilman the wittier lines and more freedom of interpretive movement. The humor at times was a tad bit too old school machismo. McArdle was stymied as the uptight straight liner who gives into the stronger, wiser male. Women are increasingly evolving away from these roles.
But the script was true to life. We trusted the writer and felt safe in the familiar dialogue of two resistant, yet hopeful lovers. Who hasn’t had a fantasy about the person across the aisle doing their crossword, too? We all have those dreams of running away with a stranger on a train. Don’t we?
Jerry Mayer’s 2 Across is in an open-ended run at St. Luke’s Theatre (308 West 46th St. between 8th and 9th Aves.) in Manhattan. Evening performances are at 8 p.m. on Wednesday and Saturday. Matinees are at 2 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $39.50 and can be purchased by calling 212-239-6200 or visiting Telecharge.com. For more information, visit 2AcrossThePlay.com.
The Golden Bride ("Di Goldene Kale"), a joyful operetta from 1923 performed on the compact stage at the Museum of Jewish Heritage by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, is set in a small Russian village and begins with a tongue-in-cheek song about money. In Yiddish with English and Russian supertitles, the cast sings “Oi, Oi, The Dollar” when Goldele, a young woman who has been raised by another family learns that her father, who moved to America when she was a child, has died and left her a fortune. Thus begins a tale that folds real-world politics (the metamorphosing face of Russia, immigration and the pursuit of money in America) into a fairytale of love and marriage.
