Before the age of global pop stardom, there was Harry Lauder—a kilted powerhouse of British music hall and vaudeville whose songs and irrepressible personality made him one of the most beloved entertainers of the early 20th century. In Lauder: Scotland’s Kilted King of Broadway, Jamie MacDougall brings this larger-than-life figure back to the stage with infectious warmth and musical flair that turns biography into jubilant theatrical celebration.
After Pulitzer Prize–winning plays in 1938 (Our Town) and 1942 (The Skin of Our Teeth), Thornton Wilder, in his remaining 33 years of life, didn’t write another full-length, original play. Our Town, likely the most produced American play of all time, still burns brightly, undimmed by the passing decades. It is, then, no mystery why the allure of The Emporium, an unfinished Wilder play that exists in 360 handwritten pages at Yale’s Beinecke Library, called, Siren-like, to playwright Kirk Lynn, who has undertaken the task of assembling, interpreting, and finishing it. The result is a road full of cracks and bumps, but one that leads somewhere impossible to forget.
British fascism may have preceded Hitler and Mussolini, but those dictators inspired homegrown demagogues who reveled in mass rallies and mobilized Blackshirts to harass and terrorize impoverished immigrants. Tim Gilvin’s and Alex Kanefsky’s musical Cable Street recounts, in scenes alternating between the modern day and 1936, how British fascism turned out differently, as residents of London’s multicultural East End united to deter a right-wing rally on their turf.
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.
Randall Sharp has been writing and directing plays for her Axis Theatre Company for more than 30 years. Radiating from the basement of One Sheridan Square, the sacred and profane locale that once housed Café Society, then Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Sharp’s jabby storytelling is never without its quirks. Her latest work, a space oddity called Specimen, is no exception.
Before the age of global pop stardom, there was Harry Lauder—a kilted powerhouse of British music hall and vaudeville whose songs and irrepressible personality made him one of the most beloved entertainers of the early 20th century. In Lauder: Scotland’s Kilted King of Broadway, Jamie MacDougall brings this larger-than-life figure back to the stage with infectious warmth and musical flair that turns biography into jubilant theatrical celebration.
