In his solo show ta-da!, Josh Sharp draws on his immense charm and deft wit to navigate subjects that are far weightier than his upbeat title implies. They include pedophilia, cancer, gay-bashings of varying intensity, and a near-death experience. He does it while holding a clicker that initially projects everything he says on a screen behind him precisely: “Hi. Hello. What’s up. How are you? Hi. Hello. Hi. Welcome.” His diction is crisp and clear, so there’s really no need for the screen, except as a display of physical stamina and memory, and a source of visual variety. Eventually, though, under Sam Pinkleton’s direction, Sharp’s script and the screen projections diverge amusingly to add a layer of comic counterpoint—a practice that reaches back to Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily? in 1966.
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.
Ginger Twinsies is a parody of the 1998 film The Parent Trap, itself a reboot of the 1961 film of the same name. Although the parody focuses on the 1998 Lindsay Lohan version, both films share a completely ridiculous storyline that allows a child actor to play two characters. So many coincidences and lapses in logic boggle the rational mind. Therefore, Ginger Twinsies, written and directed by Kevin Zak, has carte blanche to unmercifully mock its source material. It is 80 minutes of high-energy hijinks, slapstick, sight gags, wordplay, and enough 1990s trivia to be its own Trivial Pursuit category.
The Irish Rep is currently staging its fourth production since 2013 of Conor McPherson’s 1997 play The Weir, with several of the cast reprising roles. And yet there is nothing stale about this staging—instead, the play is brought to exhilarating life by a marvelous ensemble, under Ciarán O’Reilly’s assured direction. The Weir is essentially a collection of four ghost stories, which arise naturally out of the banter in a rural Irish pub, that ultimately reveal more about the loneliness of the people telling them than anything supernatural.
A multitude of transgressions come to light in Terry Curtis Fox’s Transgression. This melodrama about New York artists consists of 19 scenes toggling back and forth between 2010 and 1970. At irregular intervals, the playwright detonates ugly, morally irksome surprises. The result is a two-hour, slow-motion collision between louche mores in the Warhol era and the subsequent new-millennial sensitivity that augured the eruption of #MeToo.
In The Day I Accidentally Went to War, comedian Bill Posley turns a twist of fate into a riveting true tale of survival, absurdity, and the scars of service. Under the deft direction of Bente Engelstoft, Posley’s solo show fuses sharp comedy with searing truth to capture the American veteran’s experience in all its contradictions.
