Between 1910 and 1940, San Francisco’s Angel Island processed somewhere around 250,000 Chinese immigrants. Often detained in a prison-like environment for weeks, months, or even years, Chinese immigrants had to undergo a rigorous series of tes …Read more

photo by Julieta Cervantes Alfie is a quiet, ordinary man who is a ticket-taker on a bus during the day, but by evening he is the director of the players at St Imelda’s Church. The power of the theater transforms Alfie and his loyal company of thespi …Read more

At the end of Shakespeare’s classic play, “Romeo and Juliet,” Juliet awakens to realize that Romeo is dead. Heartbroken, she commits suicide. What if she didn’t kill herself? What if, instead, she leaves Verona with her best friends and her trusty nu …Read more

“Kimberly Akimbo” opens with Kimberly approaching her 16th birthday; and nearing the end of her life expectancy. She is a special teenage girl who suffers from a rare condition that causes her to age at 4 1/2 times the normal rate. So at 16, she has …Read more

It’s probably safe to say that mime theatre is an underappreciated art form. But if you want to see modern miming at its best, look no further than Broken Box Mime Theater. The company’s most recent production, A BKBX Frankenstein, was an entertainin …Read more

There’s nothing like an evening at Carnegie Hall in the company of the New York Pops and four Broadway stars, as charming as they are talented, to put stars in your eyes and a song in your heart. Those four stars are Nikki Renée Daniels, Jordan Donic …Read more

photo by Emilio Madrid Cancer, type two diabetes, death. Hardly the fodder for comedy – Yet In the hands of Mike Birbiglia, this serious subject matter becomes hysterical in his latest one-man show, “The Old Man and The Pool.” As with his other shows …Read more

Halloween may be over, but as long as Radiotheatre’s The Haunting of 85 East 4th Street is playing at The Kraine Theater, spooky season is emphatically not. Written by Dan Bianchi, this sufficiently terrifying show, which opened 16 years ago, returns …Read more

Photo-by-Matthew-Murphy A show about rock music should be loud. So loud that you feel the music going through you! When the cast of “Almost Famous: The Musical ” took the stage and performed “Ramble On,” I felt the vibrations pounding through my ches …Read more

On Sunday, The Lion King celebrates its 25th Broadway anniversary. That will also be a milestone for Ray Mercer, who’s been with the show for 20 years, making him one of the longest-running male dancers in Broadway history. In addition to playing the …Read more

photo-by-Julieta-Cervantes The true star of the revival of “August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson” isn’t Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks or John David Washington. Although the three actors all give fine performances, the true star of the drama is the e …Read more

Every now and then, between revivals, jukebox musicals, movie-based musicals, and productions hellbent on making a statement, you come across that increasingly rare thing in theatre: an original, bare bones musical so tenderly moving you find yoursel …Read more

What–or should we say who–makes a monstress monstrous? This is the question raised by Hunger & Thirst Theatre’s bluegrass musical Monstress, written by Emily Kitchens with original music by Ben Quinn and Titus Tompkins, and directed by Hondo We …Read more

photo by Marc J. Franklin “Keep your eyes on the cards,” instructs the young man on stage as he shifts three playing cards around on a makeshift stand. It’s not so easy as we get lulled by the rhythmic cadence of his voice and his beguiling friendly …Read more

Sometimes horror works best in short, self-contained stories. Such is the case with the New Ambassadors’ short horror-themed play festival, FEARfest 2022, at Tada! Theater. Seven short plays deal with real and imagined horror: from a possessed hand t …Read more

When a young musician returns to Turkey to care for her troublesome father, she gets a lot more than she bargained for–and so does the audience. Produced by Ars Nova and PlayCo at Greenwich House, Melis Aker’s HOUND DOG is a trippy, often perplexing …Read more

The word revival suggests a renewal or improvement of something. So each time there’s a Broadway revival, the director tries to change something to encourage ticket sales. The recent hit “The Music Man” offered star power with Hugh Jackman and Sutton …Read more

In The Anthropologists’ Artemisia’s Intent, written and directed by Melissa Moschitto, 17th-century Italian painter Artemisia, played by Mariah Freda, returns to share her insights and experiences with a 21st-century audience. In addition to explaini …Read more

photo by Joan Marcus In his most personal work yet, playwright Tom Stoppard tells the story of the Merz family. Somewhat autobiographical, “Leopoldstadt” begins with a tableau of an extended family in Vienna in 1899. It is Christmas time, and, althou …Read more

In honor of Halloween and Dia de los Muertos, FRIGID New York and Something From Abroad present the first-ever Days of the Dead Festival. Running October 20 through November 1 at The Kraine Theater and UNDER St. Marks, the festival’s 13 shows include …Read more

photo credit @ Jeremy Daniel The play “Cost of Living” by Martyna Majok will touch your heart and resonate in your consciousness long after you’ve left the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Deftly directed by Jo Bonney, the 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning pla …Read more

Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune is one of those often overlooked women from America’s past whose story not only deserves, but needs to be told. At TheaterLab, a cast directed by Kathleen Brant take on the challenge via Richarda Abrams’ biopic-style play Beth …Read more

Rob Rokicki’s Monstersongs is possibly the greatest (and definitely the funnest) Halloween album of all time. Released by Broadway Records back in 2017, the graphic novel rock album recently got an update with a brand-new song: “Silver Bullet.” A col …Read more

I’ll admit I came in predisposed to like Randy Sharp’s production of Washington Square. Henry James is one of my favorite authors, and I read the story of Catherine’s ill-fated hopes earlier this year. The Axis Theatre Company did not disappoint, cre …Read more

When aspiring young actress Tig Kennedy is raped by her would-be producer, she faces a wrenching choice: expose the wrongdoing and turn her back on a promising career in Hollywood? Or brush her trauma under the rug and continue with business as usual …Read more

Storytelling, on perhaps its most basic level, is a means of transmitting memories and messages from one generation to the next. As such, it becomes a sort of ritual. By sharing our stories with others, we’re released from the burden of carrying them …Read more

Note: This album review is a guest post by Nicole McCray. Reinventing musical theater in a new and exciting genre: Eleri Ward released her second album, Keep a Tender Distance, of folk versions of the late Stephen Sondheim’s songs on September 16. It …Read more

Gertrude Stein’s Four Saints in Three Acts is, to put it bluntly, nonsensical. An avant-garde opera with a libretto by Stein and a score by Virgil Thomson, it’s more word-driven than plot-driven: the libretto repeats the same lines endlessly, strings …Read more

photo by Matt Murphy / @murphymade When a show moves from a big Broadway stage to an off-Broadway venue, something’s gotta give. Whether it’s the staging, the size of the cast, or the number of musicians. Will the Off-Broadway audience enjoy the same …Read more

Note: This album review is a guest post by Nicole McCray. Musicals may not always last long on Broadway, but many sometimes become popular with the community and high school theaters. This is also the case for 13: The Musical: a comedy that celebrate …Read more