“I’ve heard that this is being referred to as an Off-Broadway play,” sighs comedian Julio Torres at the outset of Color Theories. Julio, author and leading actor, casts a knowing glance across the audience, pausing for a comically timed beat, and shakes his head laconically: “No … no, no, no, no. … That could not be further from the truth.” As this sly, charming theater piece zips along, however, it becomes clear that Color Theories is indeed an Off-Broadway play, not merely a spiffily staged stand-up routine.
Just like that other Alexander currently celebrated on the New York stage, fashion designer Alexander McQueen rose from humble origins to make his mark in an elite milieu. Darrah Cloud’s new bio-play House of McQueen features Bridgerton heartthrob Luke Newton in the title role, with Broadway musical star Emily Skinner as McQueen’s mother, Joyce, and Catherine LeFrere as his friend and patron Isabella Blow—the two most important women in McQueen’s life.
Henrik Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck received a confused reaction from most critics after it was published in 1884. Almost alone, George Bernard Shaw acclaimed it, and while its reputation has gradually grown, it isn’t performed nearly so much as A Doll’s House or Hedda Gabler or Ghosts: the last New York City production in English was in 1987. For a play that the stern critic John Simon called “one of the finest tragicomedies in all dramatic literature,” the neglect is shocking, so Theatre for a New Audience deserves kudos for resurrecting it. The result, however, is often disappointing.
It’s a minor theatrical annoyance, but one that does irk some critics: When your set displays a large wall clock, center stage, make sure it’s running. The wall clock in This Is Government, Nina Kissinger’s disappointing new comedy at 59E59, displays 4:55 in the 15-minute first scene and stays there, with the three denizens of Washington’s Cannon House Office Building moving the hands manually to tick off the subsequent scenes in a roughly seven-hour dramatic arc. It plays amateurishly, and so, unfortunately, does much of This Is Government.
With sharp humor and raw vulnerability, Michael Levin’s Sober Songs, directed by Chris Mackin, dives into the tangled lives of six young adults navigating recovery and their gruff but compassionate sponsor, Cap. Through emotional ballads and witty dialogue, the musical delivers a candid, character-driven look at the messy highs and lows of sobriety.
If only the romance of Gilda Radner and Gene Wilder were as straightforward as two comic icons collaborating on a professional project and eventually falling in love. For Wilder and Radner, it wasn’t nearly that simple. Cary Gitter’s Gene and Gilda provides the backstory of how these talented individuals managed a complex personal magnetism, bolstering each other’s confidence and respective on-screen personas, that morphed into a deep love.
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.
