A year ago, I had the opportunity to review Alexander Perez’s dark comedy Randy’s Dandy Coaster Castle, which follows a team of overworked, underpaid employees at a rundown amusement park already in its death throes. Then playing at IRT, the producti …Read more
Kathy Ng’s Happy Life, directed by Kat Yen at Walkerspace, is not a show for everyone. Nor is it a show for the faint of heart. But if kinky, morbid humor is your thing, well guess what, it’s your lucky day, because this is a kinky, violent, tentacle …Read more
Priyanka Shetty’s play The Elephant in the Room (TEITR), playing at 59E59 until July 24, explores the challenges of diversity while rooting them in the shared identity of human experience. Elephant comes highly recommended, having won Broadway World …Read more
Maya Angelou’s 1969 memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has already been adapted for both film and stage, but New York City Children’s Theater’s world-premiere production at Theatre Row is the first stage adaptation for young audiences. And it’s p …Read more
What does it mean to be a Jew today? That’s the main question asked in Michael Takiff’s clever if convoluted solo show Jews, God, and History (Not Necessarily in That Order), currently playing The Siggy Theater at The Flea. In a series of dizzyingly …Read more
“Poetry is what gets lost in translation,” said Robert Frost. And after watching Anchuli Felicia King’s engrossing and poetic Golden Shield, I’m inclined to add “as is love.” Directed by May Adrales at New York City Center, the Manhattan Theatre Club …Read more
“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
“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