Playwright Jennifer Blackmer takes great pains to jazz up a history lesson in Predictor, her tribute to the unheralded woman who created the home pregnancy test, Meg Crane. The chronological account of Crane’s invention is interspersed with musical and joky skits, as well as scenes representing Crane’s thoughts or flashbacks in her life.
Molière’s Tartuffe is robustly reimagined by Lucas Hnath in a randy new version directed by Sarah Benson, turning the classic comedy of hypocrisy into a breathless, contemporary satire. With choreography by Raja Feather Kelly and a fearless cast led by Matthew Broderick and David Cross, the production unleashes ferocious wit and gleeful buffoonery.
Anna Christie,Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 Pulitzer Prize drama, has been overshadowed by his late, great behemoths: Long Day’s Journey into Night and The Iceman Cometh are more often seen than the briefer play. Yet Thomas Kail’s enthralling production at St. Ann’s Warehouse makes a strong case for this neglected earlier work.
The 1975 Australian film Picnic at Hanging Rock unfurls an atmospheric, unsettling little story of mysterious forces disturbing the titular outing, enjoyed by students at a Victoria, Australia, girls’ school circa 1900. In the movie, director Peter Weir keeps the proceedings eerie and foreboding as some of the girls on the picnic just vanish, leaving their classmates and the school personnel baffled and devastated. A well-deserved international success, Picnic at Hanging Rock grips the viewer even as not a lot happens: the film is all mood. The emotions are strong, but nothing about it screams, “I need to be sung.”
Peggy Stafford’s Everything Is Here explores the later stage of the life cycle—what some call the golden years, and others call the twilight years—by focusing on three women in their 70s: Bev (Jan Leslie Harding), Bonnie (Petronia Paley) and Janice (Mia Katigbak). Living in senior housing, they find their days are punctuated by the visiting nurse, Nikki (Suzannah Millonzi), who has a sadness beneath her cheerful demeanor, and the lanky and handsome Grant (Pete Simpson), who leads meditation and mindfulness classes at the home while he auditions for acting roles.
Gotta Dance, conceived by Nikki Feirt, is a choreographic musical revue of dances from Broadway shows—all performed by an expert cast of performers who sing and dance. The production, codirected by Feirt and Randy Skinner, flows well, and each number benefits from being staged by someone who had intimate knowledge of the original.
This Is Not a Drill is York Theatre’s second production in a year built on a people-stuck-in-a-hotel template. Last December’s Welcome to the Big Dipper involved a blizzard; in Drill, guests of Honolulu’s Hibiscus Resort have their trips disrupted by an emergency alert about an inbound missile.
