Brand New Jew, A DNA Comedy at East to Edinburgh, 59E59 Theaters

Brand New Jew, A DNA Comedy presents a clever and relevant premise – what would you do if your DNA ancestry test turns up information that forces you to fundamentally change your belief systems and world view? Monica Bauer poses this fascinating question in her pithy one-woman solo show. She is an adopted child who was raised in a staunch Catholic, Polish family with an anti-Semitic father. Her DNA ancestry test reveals that she is 71% Jewish with “family” having died in the Holocaust. She strives to fathom the best route to reconcile these different cultural and religious aspects of

Vivian’s Music, 1969 at East to Edinburgh, 59E59 Theaters

Vivian’s Music, 1969 is a sensuous, intoxicating experience. It is inspired by a tragic true story that leaves you feeling bereft. This production doesn’t require any additional bells and whistles. The text and the performances are so rich, complex, layered and absorbing you really don’t need any further embellishments. This magical piece is on its way to the the Edinburgh festival where productions famously have about 8 minutes to “get-in” i.e. no time for elaborate sets, costumes, lightings etc. It is vital for a theater company to strip down the staging to its bare bones whilst maintaining a mighty punch.

Dear Diary LOL at ICE Factory, New Ohio Theatre

Dear Diary LOL is the funniest show I have seen in ages. I was laughing like a hyena, snorting my fruit punch out of my nose and slapping my plus-one with the demented fervor of an overzealous evangelist. It’s all due to the verbatim diary entries of six tween-teens from the late 90s/early 2000s. These women willingly offered up their younger selves’ musings to lead artist, Francesca Montanile Lyons of the Antigravity Performance Project, to create this compelling gem. Francesca Montanile Lyons mined her own middle school diary and those of her willing friends – Megan Thibodeaux, Alicia Crosby, Nikki Hudgins,

NINAGAWA Macbeth at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival

Feudal Japan might seem an unlikely setting for the Shakespearean masterpiece known as the “Scottish play,” but in actuality it could not be more interesting or appropriate, as was made clear through the vision of the late director, Yukio Ninagawa’s emotionally compelling, visually electrifying ode to the Bard’s  killer couple -- NINAGAWA Macbeth -- playing at the David H. Koch Theater as part of Lincoln Center’s annual acclaimed Mostly Mozart Festival. This exceptional revival of Ninagawa’s landmark 1980 production was the last production overseen by the legendary director before his death in 2016 and these performances mark the work’s final

Before We’re Gone at 13th St. Repertory Theatre Company

Before We’re Gone is a sumptuous exploration of second chances. It has the rhythm and smell of nostalgia –like you are watching a lost play of Lillian Hellman, Tennesee Williams, Arthur Miller or Edward Elbee. The characters are meticulously drawn and we fall into their lives like a Saint Bernard on an old sofa –its immensely satisfying and comfortable to experience. Every element of this production is a memory trigger and it feels like you are walking with an old friend in deep conversation dissecting roads taken, paths avoided and future forks worth navigating. The rich, potent text has been written

Vic Dibitetto: July 28th 8pm at The NYCB Theater at Westbury

Anyone who knows anything about comedy could never deny the influence Long Island has had on the stand up comedy scene since it's inception. The endless list of greats that call Long Island their home and cut their teeth doing comedy here is well known in the annals of comedy history. That rich history continues with the great talent that Governors Comedy produces on a daily basis on Long Island. In the mid 1990's I had the opportunity to work as and usher and backstage at what was then The Westbury Music Fair, which has a history of it's own that

The Pattern at Pendarvis at HERE Arts Center

So what’s a Pendarvis, and what sort of pattern does it contain? Behind Dean Gray’s somewhat cryptic title is a sweet, sincere, but very small exploration of Midwestern mid-20th century life, and how varying small-town factions got along together, or didn’t. Its source material, Will Fellows’ 2004 book A Passion to Preserve: Gay Men as Keepers of Culture, probably tells us more. What’s onstage at HERE, a production of the New Dog Theatre Company, amounts to a snapshot—an intriguing snapshot, but one with a frustratingly blurry focus. Dean Gray’s three-character drama of gay life in homophobic 20th century Wisconsin is sweet

Theatre: The Bridge Production Group presents ‘The Blue Room’ at the WhiteBox Art Gallery

Over one year, He (Max Hunter) and She (Christina Toth) rekindle their relationship through the lives of others.  Some encounters are planned.  Others random.  Rich, poor, powerful, destructive, creative, desperate, and middling hook up and movie on, leading back the original prostitute.  That's David Hare's slow-burning look inside The Blue Room, now playing with its two excellent leads at the WhiteBox Art Gallery. Hare borrowed the premise from the Arthur Schnitzler’s 1897 sex farce Reigen (Roundelay).  The playwright got into trouble with Anti-Semitic Viennese censors and critics, but the play nevertheless became an international hit.  It is also a film classic, Max Ophüls's  La ronde (Round,

Brecht on Brecht at The Atlantic Stage 2

Brecht on Brecht is a monumental work that serves as an urgent invitation to - “change the world, she needs it.” In this production eight performers take us on an adrenaline fueled musical ride through some of Bertolt Brecht’s most powerful observations on social and political fall out. This “theatrical collage” has been woven together by George Tabori and serves to provoke us into deep introspection about the state of our current political climate. It’s a gift for those on the front lines, who are dedicating their energy to securing our democracy, to hear such poignant wisdom coming from someone

The After-Dinner Joke at The Atlantic Stage 2

The After-Dinner Joke is a biting black comedy about the “business” of doing “good”. It’s a fantastic production that seems to have a cast of thousands wrapping us up in a tornado of lively performances. Caryl Churchill wrote this teleplay for the BBC in 1977 and it remains an astute satire that pokes and prods at charity organizations and their effectiveness. The Potomac Theatre Project (PTP) mounts a phenomenal production that is slick and incredibly entertaining. PTP/NYC’s artistic vision is to “redefine politically aware theatre for the 21st century by presenting theatrically complex and thought-provoking work of contemporary social and

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