In his solo show Ai Yah Goy Vey!, Richard Chang celebrates multicultural New York through the fictional tale of a Chinese man’s borough-hopping search for the father he has never met. But his picaresque is peppered with questionable jokes and portrayals, and, despite an impressive array of costumes, props and video backdrops, the production has an amateurish air to it.
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.
“My goal is to write plays with exciting stories, smart characters and sharp dialogue. The reviewers report that my plays are full of philosophical ideas. So be it. I’m tired of plays about dysfunctional families and jumbled identities. For me, ideas are more exciting.” So goes the program bio of Douglas Lackey, author of Hans Litten: The Jew Who Cross-Examined Hitler, a new historical drama at Theater Row. And he’s true to his words, or at least two of them: “philosophical ideas” dominate, sometimes at the expense of character development, tension, and atmosphere. What’s onstage isn’t uninvolving or unmoving, but one is very aware of what’s missing.
Playwright Nick Thomas’s powerful Anonymous centers on a weekly meeting of an addiction support group. Skillfully crafted to highlight the strength of community and recovery, Anonymous focuses on diverse characters who speak about their lives while seeking support from their fellow addicts. All the participants have secrets, protecting themselves until powerful disclosures transform an ordinary weekly meeting into something extraordinary.
With Data, playwright Matthew Libby has crafted both a techno-thriller and an indictment of Big Tech, in all its mercenariness and disregard for personal privacy and security. Whereas tech-themed dramas typically portray futuristic scenarios, Data’s story of a Silicon Valley company aiding in a federal immigration crackdown seems ripped from this week’s headlines.
Sashay away? Nah, in Little House on the Ferry the drag queen tap-dances—and it’s just one of the old-fashioned musical-theater pleasures of this exuberant production, described in promotional material as an “immersive nightclub musical.”
