Near the end of the Barry Manilow musical Harmony, the surviving Comedian Harmonist Ari Leshnikoff, “a Bulgarian singing waiter” who survived the Holocaust to return to his home country, brags to a rabbi: “We saved them, Rabbi! Every Jewish person in Bulgaria! We wouldn’t let them have them! Not one!” This startling declaration, which demanded elaboration, is the foundation of The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria. The story of Boris III might have remained a historical footnote but for Sasha Wilson, the cowriter of the piece (with Joseph Cullen), whose grandparents escaped Bulgaria during World War II. It turns out that the history of Bulgaria in the 20th century is far more complicated than the Harmony passage suggests.
An underlying anxiety is on display in Abe Koogler’s Staff Meal about the appeal of his absurdist play: exhibit A is a character listed as Audience Member in the program (Stephanie Berry), who interrupts the proceedings about 30 minutes into the show to offer a detailed explanation of why she is not pleased:
Is this a play about restaurants or the people who work there? I’d happily watch a play about that—if it was different.
Take a stand! Inspire action! Touch our hearts—or at least you should try!
We’ve given this gift to you of our evening—one of our precious few nights on this earth—and you’re showing us this?????
Ben Target’s solo show Lorenzo is an end-of-life comedy that is both joyful and surprising. Written and performed by Target (pronounced Tar-ZHAY), and directed by Adam Brace and Lee Griffiths, it is an autobiographical 65 minutes that focuses on a time when Target gave up his work as a comedian to become a live-in caretaker for an aging family friend, “Uncle” Lorenzo Wong.
Playwright Sarah Ruhl and performance-artist Taylor Mac, both recipients of MacArthur Foundation “genius grants” and past finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, are currently at the Signature Theatre for a revival of Ruhl’s 1998 adaptation of Orlando, the 1928 novel by Virginia Woolf. Mac, who’s playing the title role, is renowned as a dramatist but, on this occasion, serves strictly as an actor.
At the outset of Ife Olujobi’s Jordans, a surreal comic-horror satire of racial capitalism and its effects on Black bodies, Jordan (Naomi Lorrain), a Black receptionist at a fashionable event space/production facility, essentially builds the stylish, gleaming set (designed by Matt Saunders). This activity is one of many moments in director Whitney White’s sleek production when Jordan’s unceasing labor in the face of disregard or outright hostility from her all-white co-workers is highlighted. Later, when Jordan’s colleague Emma (Brontë England-Nelson) says in a presentation to their wicked boss, Hailey (Kate Walsh), that the women at the firm are “slaving away,” she explicitly does not include Jordan in her statement.
Part ghost story, part coming-of-age drama, part memory play, Being Chaka—written by Tara Amber, Chuk Obasi and Nalini Sharma—is a provocative investigation into racism in America. The surreal plot centers on the character Chaka (Kahiem Rivera), a black 16-year-old transfer student at East Prep High School in Manhattan. As the action unfolds, the audience will see him continually shifting between reality and dreamscapes, with the line between the two worlds often blurring.
Ron Lasko’s new immersive theater experience, A Gaga Guide to the Lower East Side, takes audiences on a walking tour of the Lower East Side to visit locations and venues that were frequented by pop star Lady Gaga during the start of her singing career.
Tony Sportiello and Albert M. Tapper’s new musical comedy On the Right Track invites audiences to ride the rails on a New Jersey Transit train carrying three couples who have three very different problems. Sensitively directed by Mauricio Cedeño, the show is not only entertaining but edifying. It also reminds folks that “sometimes the key to happiness is simply a matter of knowing which door you want to open . . . and which one you want to keep closed.”
Perhaps because one must dodge homeless people to get to the theater the time seems right for the new one-woman musical, Walking with Bubbles. Created, written and performed by Jessica Hendy, and based on her journey as a single mother rebuilding her life after her husband Adam’s mental illness and homelessness, this female-driven narrative is inspiring and may well impart hope to others in crisis.
The Wife of Willesden, novelist Zadie Smith’s captivating playwriting debut, is a contemporary version of The Wife of Bath’s prologue and tale from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. As many an English major will attest, Alyson, the Wife of Bath, is the most colorful of the pilgrims whose verse monologues form the bulk of Chaucer’s 14th-century masterpiece. Using rhymed couplets with 10 syllables per line (as did Chaucer), Smith has transformed Alyson to Alvita, a Jamaica-born Londoner of today, in a comedy faithful to its source material yet discerning about contemporary social issues.
The New Place Players’ production of Othello at Casa Clara, a former foundry replete with balconies and staircases, is an unusual, site-specific staging that pulls the audience into the world of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Makenna Masenheimer directs the 1604 tragedy without a fourth wall, and a limited audience of 50 assures an intimate experience.
Ronán Noone’s The Smuggler heightens the inherent challenges of the one-person play with rhyming verse. The one-act “thriller in rhyme,” as it is subtitled, is a 9,000-word poem, but solo performer Michael Mellamphy, under the direction of Conor Bagley, clears the hurdles of the challenging form and effectively engages and entertains the audience—all while crafting cocktails and, of course, rhyming.
Jill Sobule’s F*ck7thGrade, a queer musical-memoir that marries narrative and song, has returned to the Wild Project for a limited engagement. Directed by Lisa Peterson, Sobule (music, lyrics, and concept) shares her life story thus far, cleverly drawing upon her stultifying days in seventh grade as a jumping-off point to examine her life beyond middle school.
Asi Wind’s new close-up magic show, Inner Circle, may be the perfect antidote to the midwinter blahs. Wind, a master magician, eschews tricks with traditional playing cards by using ones that hold a mirror up to his audience—patrons write their names with a red or black Sharpie on blank-faced playing cards of standard size and texture, which, once collected, become his single deck for the evening. Wind believes that by having his audience members personalize each card, it makes them one audience before the show begins.
The Irish experimental theater company Dead Centre is taking a wrecking ball to Chekhov’s unwieldy five-hour play Platonov (also known as Untitled Play) with its new metatheatrical work, Chekhov’s First Play. Devised and directed by Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd, this 70-minute production is a radical reworking of the original four-act drama, playfully magnifying its follies and the overreach of its young playwright, who penned it before he was 20.
Shakespeare’s late romance The Winter’s Tale poses two huge challenges to any director. One is that Leontes, the king of Sicilia who has been hosting his bosom buddy Polixenes, king of Bohemia, for nine months, suddenly and without reason suspects his queen, Hermione, of adultery with his old friend. The other is a jump in time between the first three acts—steeped in tragedy—to a fourth act of pastoral comedy, and a last act of redemption. Director Eric Tucker’s production of The Winter’s Tale for Bedlam seems to have taken its approach from the company’s title: it’s almost all bedlam.
A woman walks over to a large flat-screen TV and, using the remote control, selects a karaoke track. Believe it or not, this is the start of a play set in occupied France in 1944: This Beautiful Future, directed by Jack Serio. That woman and her male counterpart—theater vets Angelina Fiordellisi and Austin Pendleton as characters named Angelina and Austin—are on stage for the entire 80-minute running time, but the story really centers on two teenagers: Otto, a German soldier stationed in Chartres in the summer of ’44, and Elodie, a local girl. They’re both painfully naive. She thinks her Jewish neighbors will eventually come home; he’s psyched to march into England and anticipates a quick British surrender.
Echoing through the halls and into the New Ohio Theatre’s performance space is My Onliness, a daring new experimental work co-produced by the collective One-Eighth Theater, the New Ohio Theatre, and IRT Theater. Written by New Ohio’s artistic director, Robert Lyons, My Onliness takes elements inspired by Polish dramatist Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz and transforms them into what One-Eighth declares as the New Absurd. And wonderfully absurd it is.
Near the opening of Hyprov: Improv Under Hypnosis, Colin Mochrie refers to himself as “international comic icon,” but if you haven’t ever seen What’s My Line, Anyway? you might be skeptical of his sweeping claim. (Mochrie’s wry delivery suggests that the description is a bit of a spoof.) Nevertheless, the Canadian native is definitely the funnier half of Hyprov, which combines two disciplines into something unusual and raucously entertaining.
Katsura Sunshine’s Rakugo is a fresh and funny solo show in which the director and star, Katsura Sunshine, spins yarns with entrancing charm in the ancient Japanese comic storytelling tradition known as rakugo. It is a pleasure to come across a piece that deals, wittily and delightfully, with a little-known dramatic art form.
After squandering her inheritance as an expatriate in Paris, Lyubov Ranevskaya, protagonist of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, comes home to Russia to discover that the old order, so favorable to the haute bourgeoisie, has been scrambled by burgeoning social mobility. Unable to meet the carrying charges on the family estate, Ranevskaya (Jessica Hecht) and her brother Gaev (Mark Nelson) dither rather than addressing the double whammy of altered personal circumstances and a transformed national culture.
At its core, Donja R. Love’s powerful drama Soft has a certain familiarity. It is a variation on The Blackboard Jungle or Up the Down Staircase—but with a more ruthless, 21st-century demeanor. Its teenage characters have moved beyond the troubled inner city to incarceration, and their mentor has a darker past than either Glenn Ford or Sandy Dennis’s characters, respectively, in those films. In this facility, students wear prison jump suits and are part of a correctional program designed to save them from a criminal career—or is it?
Can an atheist serve as a guide to the history, customs, and longevity of the Jewish religion and its adherents? Moreover, how can an atheist recognize that a man who has just died is with God? At first glance, this seems quite absurd. Yet neither for Michael Takiff nor for his audience does it appear to be a problem. Jews, God, and History (Not Necessarily in That Order), Takiff’s one-man show, is a roller-coaster ride through Jewish belief, identity, and practice.
Time and again, stories about what the future holds for technology and humanity have enthralled audiences—think of the rabid followings for The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror, produced 50 years apart. Playwright Karen Hartman puts forth her contribution to the genre with New Golden Age. But whereas those TV shows grabbed viewers with suspense, plot twists and amusing allegory, New Golden Age mainly offers talking. More than three-quarters of its run time is occupied by one long scene, and it consists mostly of people standing around talking. That tedium outweighs any emotional reaction that Hartman’s Facebook-run-amok scenario may elicit.
Oratorio for Living Things, Heather Christian’s new music-theater piece, was supposed to open on March 30, 2020. Two weeks before that, New York City’s playhouses closed precipitately in response to Covid-19. On the second anniversary of the aborted premiere, Oratorio has returned. After 24 months of isolation and loss, there’s a miraculous feel to this piece of theater.
