“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.
The Whole of Time
Romina Paula’s The Whole of Time chronicles the seismic impact of a seemingly casual visitor on an Argentine family. Written in 2009 and translated for the English-speaking stage by Jean Graham-Jones, the play was first presented in New York in 2024 at Torn Page, a nonprofit theater company in Chelsea. It was nominated for a Drama Desk Award that season. The Torn Page staging, directed by Tony Torn, has now been reassembled at The Brick in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as a co-production of The Brick and A/Park Productions.
Well, I’ll Let You Go
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.
Transgression
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.
Trophy Boys
In Emmanuelle Mattana’s Trophy Boys, four debaters huddle in an empty schoolroom (nifty scenic design by Matt Saunders), strategizing for the final match of an interscholastic tournament. They’re seniors at Imperium, an elite boys’ prep school; the imminent debate is against a team from a similarly tony girls’ school. This is the swan song of the boys’ high-school extracurricular lives. They’re undefeated and, being fiercely ambitious, terrified of losing this last debate, especially to a female team.
Prosperous Fools
Taylor Mac is chronicling slapstick goings-on backstage at a not-for-profit’s fundraising gala in his new comedy Prosperous Fools. Murphy’s Law is in high gear, and things are haywire. Since the not-for-profit is called National Ballet Theater, it’s clear this is Mac’s assessment of the state of the arts under the new federal administration that has made its leader chair of the board at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Bus Stop
Bus Stop, the third of four Broadway successes that playwright William Inge scored between 1950 and 1959 (the second, Picnic, won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize), takes place in a small-town diner on a route between Kansas City and Topeka. Grace (Cindy Cheung), the proprietor, keeps the place open all night, when necessary, as a refuge for travelers marooned by inclement weather. During a blizzard, a Topeka-bound bus arrives around 1 a.m.; the driver, Carl (David Shih), informs his four passengers that they’re stranded until highway crews clear the road ahead.
The United States vs Ulysses
Just ahead of Bloomsday, the annual celebration of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, Ireland’s Once Off Productions has arrived in Hell’s Kitchen with The United States vs Ulysses, the frisky entertainment now playing at the Irish Arts Center. Written by journalist/dramatist Colin Murphy, the play is intricately researched yet undidactic. Featuring a six-member cast from Ireland directed by Conall Morrison, it’s an imaginative, fresh-mouthed account of one of literary modernism’s most significant legal confrontations.
Hold Me in the Water
Ryan J. Haddad’s Hold Me in the Water, like the dramatist himself, is charming and effervescent. Also like Haddad, it’s slender (though that word has different connotations when applied to the human form and to an Off-Broadway play).
I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan
Mona Pirnot’s new play, I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan, concerns the hardscrabble existence of aspiring playwrights and the passion that keeps them writing for an industry in which, as playwright Robert Anderson ostensibly said, it’s possible to make a killing but never a living. David Greenspan is the very model of a theater artist who has persevered despite dire fiscal odds. Greenspan is pretty well-known Off-Broadway and, especially, Off-Off Broadway, but he’s certainly not a household name.
Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.
English dramatist Caryl Churchill is turning 87 this September. In advance of that landmark, the Public Theater is presenting Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp., a quadruple bill of Churchill one-acts new to New York. Like Albee on this side of the Atlantic, Churchill has always had a penchant for depicting humanity in rather abstract terms. Directed by Churchill specialist James Macdonald, these shorts are supplemented with entr’acte circus feats by a juggler (Maddox Morfit-Tighe) and an acrobat (Junru Wang). The evening’s fare may seem, at first blush, a random assortment but, upon reflection, common themes emerge.
The Twenty Sided Tavern
The Twenty Sided Tavern, inspired by Hasbro’s tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons, isn’t easy to categorize. It’s a combination of comedy, mystery, improv, and puzzle, and at times it looks and sounds like a television game show.
All the Beauty in the World
“Grief is among other things a loss of rhythm,” remarks Patrick Bringley in All the Beauty in the World. This one-performer drama, now on the miniature stage of DR2, is based on Bringley’s 2023 memoir of the same title. Both play and memoir explore the emotional life of a man in his mid-20s, sensitive and erudite, seeking solace in art and isolation following his older brother’s death. When “you lose someone, it puts a hole in your life,” says Bringley (making his theatrical debut playing himself), “and for a time you huddle down in that hole.”
Gloaming, Nowhere
Gloaming, Nowhere is variously described as “the world’s first Neo-Appalachian, Afrolachian, Southern Pop Revusical,” a “patchwork kaleidoscopic collage,” and “a musical for people who don’t like musicals.” This show by quadruple-threat J.S. Streible (composer, lyricist, librettist, and sole performer) has landed on the micro-stage of the Huron Room in the basement of Off-Broadway’s SoHo Playhouse after a “multi-state Appalachian tour.” Streible makes no secret that he hopes Gloaming, Nowhere is destined for Broadway.
The Trojans
The Trojans is a spirited musical about disengaged hourly workers acting out fictionalized memories of their long-gone high school days. A joint presentation of Loading Dock Theatre and Nancy Manocherian’s the cell, the show, directed by Eric Paul Vitale, is inspired—to some extent, at least—by Homer’s Iliad. It’s also the latest entry in an expanding catalog of American plays set in Amazon warehouses (in this instance, a fictional facility in Carlton, a small North Texas town with two high schools).
Last Call
Peter Danish’s Last Call is a fairy tale with heroes, villains, operatic emotions, and a countertenor. It’s a three-actor play set in the magical kingdom of classical music during the era of two potentates, Herbert von Karajan (1908–89) and Leonard Bernstein (1918–90), who reigned supreme in concert halls and recording studios around the world for much of the 20th century.
Dakar 2000
In the 1990s, Rajiv Joseph spent three years in the Peace Corps in Senegal. Dakar 2000, currently at Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), draws on the playwright’s memories of that experience and his understanding of East Africa at the advent of the new millennium.
Still
At the start of Still, two people—long ago, a couple; now, well over 60—are getting reacquainted in a swank hotel bar with a cocktail and a conundrum. Helen (Melissa Gilbert) comments that “the cells in your body” are “renewing themselves all the time,” and “after seven years you’re a completely different person,” at least “on a cellular level.” Mark (Mark Moses) recalls a “brain teaser” about a ship: “it’s made of wood, and every time part of it breaks they replace it with a part made of metal. And eventually every single part has been replaced. Is it still the same ship?”
The Merchant of Venice
A superb company of actors, the Arlekin Players Theatre, is in residence at Classic Stage Company (CSC) with The Merchant of Venice. The energetic production on CSC’s Lynn F. Angelson stage, however, may come as a jolt to playgoers fond of Shakespeare’s play.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, streamlined to 90 minutes and staged outdoors by Classical Theatre of Harlem, is as cool and fizzy as a glass of Prosecco. Judging by the wild guffaws and applause on opening night, the zanies who populate this most fanciful of Shakespeare’s comedies (embodied by a top-flight cast of youthful New York actors) kept a steady hold on playgoers’ attention, despite the distraction of sirens punctuating the Bard’s iambic pentameter, helicopters overhead, and heat only slightly below the day’s high of 90 degrees Fahrenheit. At a dramatic moment, an explosion of amateur fireworks just outside the amphitheater added a fortuitous burst of red and orange to the twilit sky, eliciting a gasp of audience amusement.