Of all the productions opening Off-Broadway this season, B*tchcraft may well be the most bewitching. With music and lyrics written by Bitch, and book by her and Margie Zohn, who also directs, it’s a wild journey into how Bitch, a quiet girl from suburban Michigan, shed her chrysalis to become the queer icon that she is today.
Night Sings Its Songs is a rare opportunity to see a play by Jon Fosse, the Norwegian winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. Fosse’s 1997 play is centered on a married couple, named only Young Man and Young Woman. From the outset it’s clear they are having marital difficulties. Young Man (Kyle Cameron) is unhappy and apathetic, while Young Woman is dissatisfied in her marriage and feeling stuck. They have a baby who periodically cries.
With My Man Kono, now premiering at Pan Asian Repertory, playwright Philip W. Chung has an interesting story to tell. He tells it dutifully, thoroughly, and for the most part clearly. But not excitingly. Chung has done his research. His title character, Toraichi Kono (Brian Lee Huynh), was a Japanese immigrant who made it to the United States in the early 20th century and rose to a position of relative wealth and importance, then saw his fortunes dramatically reverse.
Playing at the Soho Playhouse as part of the Fringe Encore series, Gil Scott-Heron’s Bluesology is a heartfelt tribute of spoken-word and musical performance full of angst and warmth, lovingly hosted by his daughter Gia Scott-Heron. Gil Scott-Heron, who died in 2011, was a spoken-word artist and musician, and the show presents 17 of his works from a career that extended from 1970 through 2010. Bluesology is how he described his work—he saw himself as “a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues.”
Moody and mysterious, Anywhere—a co-presentation by the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival and HERE’s Dream Music Puppetry program—might cast a spell on viewers, or thoroughly baffle them. Or both. Anybody who goes to see it expecting a “puppet show” is in for a surprise. It is far more somber and cerebral than what one thinks of as typical puppet fare. One of its two characters is portrayed by a human, and though it runs less than an hour, Anywhere is a complex production in terms of its human-scale scenic, lighting and sound design.
More than heated chess competitions occupies the center of Cándido Tirado’s New York premiere of Fish Men at INTAR, as five men who gather around the chess tables in Washington Square Park maneuver for higher stakes than mere checkmates in a game.
