Kate Whoriskey

The Apiary

The Apiary

A dystopian story about environmental catastrophe and death is not necessarily where one would expect to find humor, but Kate Douglas achieves a darkly comic triumph with her new play, The Apiary. The production at Second Stage Theater fires on all cylinders, including Kate Whoriskey’s superb direction and the uniformly stellar cast, who navigate the play’s mixture of absurdity and sincerity with precise and convincing performances.

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Letters from Max, a ritual

Letters from Max, a ritual

Sarah Ruhl’s Letters from Max, a ritual, is an adaptation of her 2018 epistolary book Letters from Max: A Poet, a Teacher, a Friendship, which included letters between Ruhl and Max Ritvo, her playwriting student and, shortly thereafter, friend. Ritvo died at age 25, of a recurrence of Ewing’s sarcoma, a pediatric cancer first diagnosed when he was 16. He graduated from college while undergoing chemotherapy and surgeries, producing poetry and plays and music along the way, becoming a teacher to Ruhl as much as she was to him.

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Cardinal

Cardinal

Signs of the decline and fall of the American Empire are everywhere visible, but perhaps nowhere more than in the Rust Belt, which has decay and depression hammered right into its nickname. Detroit may be its most potent symbol, but this ribbon, stretching from New York to Wisconsin, is peppered with towns both large and small that have never quite recovered from the trauma of deindustrialization.

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Sweat

Sweat

Editor's note: Sweat, which opened on Broadway March 26, was reviewed in November for Offoffonline by Charles Wright. His review is reprinted here:

Lynn Nottage's Sweat is tailored for the current juncture in American political life. This dark, often humorous drama concerns eight Rust Belt factory workers grappling with effects of industrial mechanization and the transfer of blue-collar jobs to other countries, especially Mexico, where operating costs are well below those in the United States.

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