Second Stage Theater might easily be one of my favorite companies in New York City, offering diverse and prevalent theater for modern audiences.  The stakes and tensions run high in their production of Jon Robin Baitz’s “Substance of Fire”, a phenome …Read more

Tongue in Cheek Production’s “Buffalo Heights” is a mostly funny look at what can happen in small town Buffalo, NY when a new French teacher is brought in to take over the high school class that a Congress woman’s daughter thinks she controls. Heads …Read more

“Annapurna” isn’t a title that rolls off the tongue, but it works for the tone of this play: not everything here is easy. Playwright Sharr White has written a dense piece about a difficult and complicated relationship between two people unable to liv …Read more

Artistic Director of Up Theater Company, James Bosley brings his childhood neighborhood, Broad Channel, to Washington Heights in a biting new drama about a struggling blue collar family who find out that a treasured painting that’s been in their livi …Read more

SEE or SKIP: After Midnight SEE because: It’s about the best Broadway revue to come down the pike in a decade or three. So polished and so precise while being so energetic. There’s no filler, no mawkishness, no mugging or begging for applause, no “Am …Read more

Growing up in the south, with an abusive, alcoholic father and a passive and emotionally void mother, young Doug Knott made the decision never to pass on his family’s legacy, promising to himself never to become a father.  In “Last of the Knotts”, Kn …Read more

If there is a trump card over satire, it would have to be satire that is smart, witty, and honest. Those qualities, along with superb musical talent, intuitive comedic timing, and sharp direction, encompass the production of “Forbidden Broadway: Aliv …Read more

Although “An Appeal to the Woman of the House” depicts a fictional account of four Freedom Riders trying to survive the night on the Alabama-Tennessee border in 1961, the play is about the intimate evolution of a childless married couple who have bee …Read more

SEE or SKIP: FLUFF – A Story of Lost Toys VENUE: New Victory Theater (ended May 4) VENUE TYPE: off-Broadway SEE because: Cute and slightly macabre story idea: children’s toys get lost or vacuumed or mangled and then are found by two women who collect …Read more

Oscar Hammerstein II has been criticized for his dopey, wide-eyed idealism, from “Oklahoma” to “The Sound of Music.” Love it or hate it, “Allegro” (1947) has moralism—along with camp and charm—coming out the wazoo. The Astoria Performing Arts Center …Read more