June - 2019

OUTSIDE MULLINGAR – Berkshire Theatre Festival

OUTSIDE MULLINGAR – Berkshire Theatre Festival

John Patrick Shanley’s “Outside Mullingar” is an Irish-American love letter to the auld sod. I say this as an Irish-American (well, half) and how Shanley’s affection for the Irish informs his four souls in rural Ireland: an aging , widower father Tony Reilly (Jeffrey Demon), Toni’s adult son Anthony (James McMenamin) and the neighboring, ailing and newly widowed Aiofe Muldoon (Deborah Hedwall) and her adult daughter Rosemary (Shannon Marie Sullivan ). My enjoyment of “Out

DRAGON SPRING, PHOENIX RISE – The McCourt at The Shed

DRAGON SPRING, PHOENIX RISE – The McCourt at The Shed

WTF is the response to “Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise” - not only as in “what was that all about?” but also “why was this made?” This senseless, colossal nothing in the colossal The McCourt (the enclosed, interior performance space at The Shed in Hudson Yards), promoting itself as a King--Fu musical, wearily strings out a threadbare plot. An underground spring, infused with the power of eternal life, is guarded over by an exiled sect of King-Fu warriors. The daughter of the se

AMERICA v. 2.1 – Barrington Stage Company

AMERICA v. 2.1 – Barrington Stage Company

Stacey Rose’s “America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise and The Eventual Extinction of the American Negro” is set in some dystopian, white propaganda theme park (or convention center or such) where four enslaved African Americans perform a minstrel-style, industrial show that instructs white audiences how Blacks themselves, not Whites and their racism, killed civil rights and annihilated Blacks. The opening number, cleverly choreographed with a nod to Kander and Ebb's "The Scottsboro

INTO THE WOODS – Barrington Stage Company

INTO THE WOODS – Barrington Stage Company

Barrington Stage Company’s INTO THE WOODS is the most uniquely and coherently conceived and the most dramatically satisfying production of the 1987 Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine classic I’d wish to see. It’s also ravishingly beautiful with a thoroughly original visual style and perfectly cast and acted with lyrics articulated with more clarity than I’ve heard before. It’s totally entrancing. The psychology of parent-child relationships is usually the musical’s dominate

CRAZY FOR YOU - Sharon Playhouse

CRAZY FOR YOU - Sharon Playhouse

Sharon Playhouse’s production of CRAZY FOR YOU, with the marvelous score by George and Ira Gershwin, is a perfect summer stock musical. There I’ve said it. Surpassing its winning Cole Porter’s ANYTHING GOES in last year’s first season under new management, Sharon Playhouse has re-united the Porter classic’s leading lady Amanda Lea LaVergne who wowed us as Reno Sweeney and its choreographer Justin Boccitto. Now, in CRAZY FOR YOU LaVergne and Boccitto, as a pair of song and

A STRANGE LOOP - Playwrights Horizons

A STRANGE LOOP - Playwrights Horizons

In the soul of Michael R. Jackson’s in-your-face, scorching new musical A STRANGE LOOP is a most tender post-adolescent, coming-of-age story. Getting there on the journey with Jackson’s protagonist, Usher (an astonishing Larry Owens), a 25 year old gay African American writing a musical about a 25 year old gay African American writing a musical, is perhaps the most candid and rawest depiction of self-discovery that’s ever been a musical. Stuffed into Roxy usher uniform, comp

BEETLEJUICE – Winter Garden Theatre

BEETLEJUICE – Winter Garden Theatre

If you have fond memories of the charm and whimsy of Tim Burton’s deliciously ghoulish 1988 fantasy- comedy BEETLEJUICE, they will be obliterated by the stage musical version. The bloated production with a ludicrously convoluted book and a noisy, unmemorable score seems inexhaustibly entertaining only to itself. The playwrighting team of Scott Brown, a former theatre critic, and Anthony King, a television writer, making their Broadway debut has expanded the film’s plot. Ada

OCTET – Signature Theatre

OCTET – Signature Theatre

The performance area of Off-Broadway’s Signature Theatre, a wide, three- quarter thrust floorspace, is transformed to a tired church basement; actors appear to be setting up for an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but what kind of therapy group is it really? Before the play starts, the background music is Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”, then the Negro spiritual “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”; why is the music about the moon and entering heaven? In Dave Malloy’s imaginatively brilliant a

LONG LOST – Manhattan Theatre Club

LONG LOST – Manhattan Theatre Club

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Margulies’ “Long Lost”, in its premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club, is a play that’s exceptionally well written, directed, cast, acted and staged. It’s also exceptionally unoriginal. Margulies tells a contemporary tale on the Cain and Abel theme. Billy (Lee Tergesen), homeless and estranged from his younger, wealthy financier brother David (Kelly Aucoin), shows up unannounced days before Christmas in David’s sleek Manhattan office.

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