“I’ve heard that this is being referred to as an Off-Broadway play,” sighs comedian Julio Torres at the outset of Color Theories. Julio, author and leading actor, casts a knowing glance across the audience, pausing for a comically timed beat, and shakes his head laconically: “No … no, no, no, no. … That could not be further from the truth.” As this sly, charming theater piece zips along, however, it becomes clear that Color Theories is indeed an Off-Broadway play, not merely a spiffily staged stand-up routine.
Just like that other Alexander currently celebrated on the New York stage, fashion designer Alexander McQueen rose from humble origins to make his mark in an elite milieu. Darrah Cloud’s new bio-play House of McQueen features Bridgerton heartthrob Luke Newton in the title role, with Broadway musical star Emily Skinner as McQueen’s mother, Joyce, and Catherine LeFrere as his friend and patron Isabella Blow—the two most important women in McQueen’s life.
Henrik Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck received a confused reaction from most critics after it was published in 1884. Almost alone, George Bernard Shaw acclaimed it, and while its reputation has gradually grown, it isn’t performed nearly so much as A Doll’s House or Hedda Gabler or Ghosts: the last New York City production in English was in 1987. For a play that the stern critic John Simon called “one of the finest tragicomedies in all dramatic literature,” the neglect is shocking, so Theatre for a New Audience deserves kudos for resurrecting it. The result, however, is often disappointing.
It’s a minor theatrical annoyance, but one that does irk some critics: When your set displays a large wall clock, center stage, make sure it’s running. The wall clock in This Is Government, Nina Kissinger’s disappointing new comedy at 59E59, displays 4:55 in the 15-minute first scene and stays there, with the three denizens of Washington’s Cannon House Office Building moving the hands manually to tick off the subsequent scenes in a roughly seven-hour dramatic arc. It plays amateurishly, and so, unfortunately, does much of This Is Government.
With sharp humor and raw vulnerability, Michael Levin’s Sober Songs, directed by Chris Mackin, dives into the tangled lives of six young adults navigating recovery and their gruff but compassionate sponsor, Cap. Through emotional ballads and witty dialogue, the musical delivers a candid, character-driven look at the messy highs and lows of sobriety.
The violence of armed revolution has traditionally been the province of men. After all, in nearly every country men hold the levers of power, men make up the armies that exercise that power, and it is primarily men who band together to oppose that power. Yet, as Ken Urban
From the moment you enter the Laurie Beechman Theater, temporary home of the comedy group, Fearsome; you will realize this is not your typical holiday play. Do not expect to find a nice cushioned seat to sit in
Admit it, it just sounds kind of good, kind of giddily charming, kind of stupid in the best way, and kind of smart in the best way too. And judging from consistently sold-out performances, I know I am not the only one who has been kind of fascinated about it. Why all the hype? Well, in an interesting twist, the buzz comes less from reviews (although reviews have been generally good) or word of mouth (although I am sure that has been good too). On the contrary, the attraction of Dov Weinstein
A play about the depression and the precocious mid-live crises of the overeducated socialists and their bourgeois parents just will not work unless the play is funny. Especially if the said depressed socialists and their bourgeois parents are Russian. There is a reason why Chekov had the wherewithal to call his most depressing stage dramas comedies; he understood that spending two hours watching a bunch of self-absorbed rich people complaining about how they never work is an absurd situation, regardless of whether or not the fourth acts were legitimately tragic. However, the necessary combination of the comic, absurd, and the tragic is just not present in this production of Maxim Gorky
Dan Rather, longtime CBS new anchor, is a monument. Before his recent brush with the faulty records regarding George W. Bush, he was a paragon of media
Just when you thought The Fringe was over and we could get back to more conventional musicals, here comes Wrong Way Up, a
Sex*But is a staged reading running every Sunday night at the Belt Theater. Director Erik Sniedze has assembled a talented cast of men
Several times during Eat the Taste, I seriously contemplated yelling, "Is there a doctor in the house?" The Barrow Street Theater should consider adding some sort of emergency medical technician to their staff, in addition to ticket-takers and ushers; there is, a very real possibility that, at the end of Eat the Taste, your gut will be busted and your sides permanently split from laughing too hard.
Eat the Taste is the latest venture by playwright Greg Kotis, who wrote the book and co-wrote the lyrics for the Tony Award-winning musical Urinetown. It stars Mr. Kotis and his writing partner, composer Mark Hollmann, as themselves. It takes place several years in the future, at the end of a second Bush administration, as three agents of the Department of Homeland Security and Attorney General John Ashcroft
Improvisation as performance is much maligned. That has less to do with the form itself than with the performers. Improv is also seen as good training for serious theatrics, or as a quick laugh a la Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Those multiple and overlapping perceptions need not be so, as demonstrated by the graduates of the New Actors
There is a groove going on uptown at the Harlem School of the Arts; there is rhythm and there is blues, there is soul and there is funk, heck, a couple of times there is even some good old-fashioned musical theater. Buy a ticket and get your booty on the D train. Nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, in its original 1971 Broadway production, Ain�t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, the Classical Theater of Harlem tells us, paved the way for the choreopoem, spoken word, and rap music. Legendary impresario Melvin Van Peebles has concocted a great bluesy, jazzy, and above all, poetic paean to a specific time and a specific place�most specifically black urban neighborhoods of the early 1970s.
Ain�t Supposed to Die a Natural Death is about the comings-and-goings of this neighborhood, a pointillist portrait of a community using no drama save its residents� daily lives, no antagonist save a general malaise called "the man." In a series of musical monologues, the residents sing their fears, frustrations, criminations, recriminations, and regrets�all blending together into a unified cry of pain.
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| (l to r) Carmen Barika and Ty Jones in Ain't Supposed to Die A Natural Death Photo Credit:Carol Rosegg | ||
But that is not to say it is not any fun.
In the opening scene of the show, Sunshine (the ebullient D. Rubin Green) walks onstage appearing mighty annoyed as he watches something go by, looks toward the audience, and cries "It just don�t make no sense how these corns are hurtin� me!" Sunshine gets on the bus and is joined in rapid succession by his neighbors, running and winding across the stage in a snaky conga line; an exciting beginning, and also the best impersonation of careening public transport this reviewer has ever seen.
That is only one of several songs, of course, and one of several characters; there is a pimp and his prostitutes, a country boy-turned Nation of Islam proponent, a drag queen and an angry lesbian, a convict on Death Row, a sad, fat man, and more. Each character has a song, each character has a moment, and almost all of it is arresting.
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| (l-r) Rashaad Ernesto Green and J. Kyle Manzay in Ain't Supposed to Die A Natural Death | ||
There are highlights�the aforementioned Sunshine; the lesbian, Dyke (Tracy Jack) who sings a plaintive song to her unseen lover, pleading that she go to a dance with her; The Con (J. Kyle Manzay), singing to lover, Lilli, the girl he murdered; the crooked Black Cop, gleefully abusing a prostitute on his beat. Perhaps the loudest accolades should go to set designer Troy Hourie, whose urban sprawl of a set is as bleak as the characters' lives.
Some may be put off by the show; as a poem, like Ntozake Shange's Obie award-winning play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, When the Rainbow is Enuf, much of what is spoken is often incomprehensible, but as a poem, its chief concern is not content, but tone; to put it more plainly (and to paraphrase Roger Ebert), it is not what it is about, but how it is about it. Like Ain�t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, Mr. Van Peebles� landmark Sweet Sweetback�s Badasss Song (famously "rated X by an all-white jury") is another endeavor remembered more for its attitude than the intricacies of its plot.
The complaints are few, but the biggest is that in the relatively small theater space of the Harlem School of the Arts, director Alfred Preisser chose to have his actors wear microphones. This amounts to gross overamplification, giving the performances a tinny, pre-recorded quality, jarring at 20 feet away. When Wino�s (Ralph Carter) microphone cut out during his performance, the natural sound of his voice energized his song�until the microphone came back on.
Perhaps that is quibbling. Even with the microphones, the alchemy is still there, the music (under the direction of William "Spaceman" Patterson) still jives, and the actors just do their thing.
Oh, yeah.
