photo by Joan Marcus It’s hard to imagine a show by Stephen Sondheim that wasn’t an immediate hit; yet “Merrily We Roll Along,” first produced in 1981, left the critics and audiences unimpressed. It was not the success that previous collaborations by …Read more
‘Tis the season for one-person Dickens shows. While Jefferson Mays performs a one-man version of A Christmas Carol on Broadway, Eddie Izzard is performing her solo version of Great Expectations Off-Broadway at The Greenwich House Theater. Izzard, a d …Read more
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
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
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
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
A CIA newbie with orders to remove the Chilean President walks into a bombed out palace. What could go wrong? In Mark Wilding’s delightful comedy Our Man in Santiago, loosely inspired by the Nixon Administration’s failed attempt to remove the Chilean …Read more
Photo by Aaron Cobb Do you believe that a person can be hypnotized? How about 20 people at the same time on a stage in front of an audience? As long as you believe or, at least, accept the premise for the evening, then you are in for an entertaining …Read more
Often a visit to the theater can be an opportunity for discovery. That’s what happened when I attended a performance of The Butcher Boy at the Irish Repertory Theatre. The musical, based upon the novel by Patrick McCabe features two exciting young ta …Read more
