Johnny G. Lloyd’s birthday birthday birthday follows a group of friends throughout the years as they celebrate milestone birthdays that two in their group share. The play begins as Marissa (Portland Thomas) and Clark (Justin Ahdoot) gather for their 21st-birthday party with their friends amid conversations about class, race, sexuality, hopes and dreams—with a helping of drugs, fights, cheating and gossip.
One-act plays are rarely staged in New York—with the exception of a recent Irish Rep bill of Beckett shorts—so Urban Stages deserves credit for undertaking two new ones, each about 50 minutes long. The plays are the result of a competition for one-acts with two characters, under the umbrella title Dynamic Duos; the two winners were chosen from about 300 submissions.
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.
