“I want to write something so Black that God can’t ignore me.” Playwright and performer Kareem M. Lucas speaks these words while standing on a huge wooden cross enshrined in a massive gold frame. The play is iNegro, a rhapsody, directed by Zoey Marti …Read more
From time to time, to quote my favorite song from Dear Evan Hansen, “words fail.” At the moment, words fail as I search for a way to describe (and adequately praise) a show whose gentle beauty and emotional force defy description, and which, ironical …Read more
Black comedy, or gallows humor, is a style of story telling that makes light of subject matter usually considered somewhat taboo, like death, suicide and disease. Either term applies to Martin McDonagh’s latest play, “Hangmen.” Harry, the main charac …Read more
“Whether on stage in front of an audience, or over the phone to a friend – we need to tell our stories. When we tell our stories, we give others permission to do the same. This is how we break the stigma.” So says Adina Taubman in the program note fo …Read more
Mary Todd Lincoln: misunderstood First Lady, bereft mother, obsessive widow–and now, the unlikely subject of a trippy piece of experimental theatre. In american vicarious’ new work Shooting Celebrities, written by John Ransom Phillips and directed b …Read more
Playwright Adam Kraar is interested in cross-cultural, cross-generational stories. His latest work, The Karpovsky Variations, follows one young woman’s search for her scattered, elusive family. Set in airport lounges over two decades, it’s a play abo …Read more
“The Minutes” Playwright Tracy Letts possesses the extraordinary ability to lull an audience into expecting something dry and ordinary but then making it explosive. Teaming up again with Anna D. Shapiro, his director for “August: Osage County,” Letts …Read more
Food is often the centerpiece of family holidays and celebrations. In “Birthday Candles”, the new play presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre, the special food is a traditional birthday cake. It’s recipe has been …Read more
As a certain Chicago lawyer would say, “Give ‘em the old razzle dazzle!” and that’s exactly what our hosts-with-the-most, Michael Hull and Dylan Bustamante, did on the big second season finale night of Broadway’s Masked Singer, which saw all five rem …Read more
Photo by Julieta Cervantes When TV’s Murphy Brown was mocking singer Barry Manilow, I was buying his albums and attending his concerts. I was unabashedly a Fanilow. So I looked forward to “Harmony,” the musical that Manilow wrote with Barry Sussman, …Read more