For its seventh season, Molière in the Park (MIP), in partnership with the Prospect Park Alliance, is producing Molière’s comedy-ballet The Imaginary Invalid in a fresh new translation by Lucie Tiberghien. Tiberghien, MIP’s founder and artistic director, has cut Molière’s original text to the bone for her streamlined production. One of the cuts is the minor character Louison, Angélique's younger sister, to bring the play to a brisk 100 minutes and focus on the central characters.
The New Group, celebrating its 30th anniversary this spring, may not be so new anymore, but that doesn’t mean they have forgotten how to rock. Indeed, their latest production, a pop musical called The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse, is nothing if not a Gen Z shout-out to teenage angst. With his music and lyrics, Michael Breslin delivers a handful of clever, hard-driving songs into the hands of a capable company of young performers. Unfortunately, Breslin’s book, co-written with Patrick Foley, has all the charm of an undisciplined child.
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.
In Robert Leverett’s We Do the Same Thing Every Week, Dick (Leverett himself) and Jane (Jessica Nesi), the famous elementary schoolbook characters, are visited on a rainy Sunday afternoon by a strange, humanoid Cat (Casey Worthington) that is going to help them have fun—whether they want it or not.
The October 1981 issue of Vogue magazine features Nastassia Kinski on the cover and includes the infamous Richard Avedon two-page photo spread of the actress wearing nothing but a huge, writhing boa constrictor. But in the alternate reality of Caitlin Saylor Stephens’s vitriolic new comedy, Five Models in Ruins, 1981, that October issue very nearly comes to feature a much lesser-known cover girl, and the accompanying story would showcase not a serpent, but five decidedly catty women in flowing white gowns.
Cracked Open is about one family’s journey with mental illness after their 18-year-old daughter suffers a psychotic breakdown. Presented during Mental Health Awareness Month, this drama, written and directed by Gail Kriegel, explores the stigma of mental illness and the often bewildering path for a family to find an effective treatment for a loved one.
