Stacey Derosier

Blackout Songs

Blackout Songs

Joe White’s Blackout Songs, nominated for an Olivier Award in 2023 and now playing Off-Broadway, depicts the convulsive romance of Alice and Charlie, who meet at the coffee urn of an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting and rush headlong into the squalid territory of pop-modernist classics such as The Lost Weekend and Days of Wine and Roses. Drunken-wastrel love is an old story, but White—with skilled assistance from director Rory McGregor and a team of very good theatrical designers—gives this short, insightful drama a 21st-century sheen.

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Well, I’ll Let You Go

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.

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Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole

Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole

Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole is a fanciful fever dream of the final taping of The Nat King Cole Show on NBC in December of 1957. This musical hits some high notes with Dulé Hill and Daniel J. Watts’ excellent acting but is hamstrung by a disjointed book by Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor, who also directs.

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Fat Ham

Fat Ham

James Ijames has borrowed rudiments of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to jump-start his roistering new comedy Fat Ham. A coproduction of the Public Theater and the National Black Theatre, Fat Ham is a dramaturgical ragbag, blending bits of the greatest tragedy in the English language with Southern Gothic caricature and sitcom tropes from Tyler Perry and the chitlin circuit. Saheem Ali has directed the show’s endearing cast with verve and velocity comparable to his lightning-paced Merry Wives in Central Park last summer.

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